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I (well, my spam trap) received email that I know is a scam, but I'm trying to understand how it works. The message contains a URL of the following form: https:/example.com:2096/?goto_app=Somethi...
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urls
#3: Post edited
by
Canina
·
2023-10-31T18:25:54Z (6 months ago)
- I (well, my spam trap) received email that I know is a scam, but I'm trying to understand how it works. The message contains a URL of the following form:
- https:/example.com:2096/?goto_app=SomethingWithoutAnExtension
- The single `/` after the protocol is suspicious, and I assume the key to a redirect that would be unfortunate. But how does this work? What's going on here?
- I wondered if everything between the first two slashes would be ignored (I've heard of an exploit that works that way), but if so, I'm not sure how the rest of this string could do anything. There's not another layer of path that could be a URL,[^1] and the thing after `goto_app` doesn't end in `.exe` or the like. I don't know if port 2096 is special.
I'm not going to _try_ it to find out, but I did try going to `https:/mydomain.org` (a domain I control, not literally "mydomain"), using one slash instead of two, and Brave took me to my site. I tried looking it up in the [IETF URL spec](https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.html) (is that the right place?) but I didn't find the details I was looking for (or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place).- How should this URL be parsed? How does this presumed scam work?
[^1]: If the URL were instead `https:/example.com:2096/something.com?goto...` then I would assume that everything up to the second slash is a decoy and it would take me to `htttps://something.com?...`. But there aren't enough slashes in the suspicious URL I received.
- I (well, my spam trap) received email that I know is a scam, but I'm trying to understand how it works. The message contains a URL of the following form:
- https:/example.com:2096/?goto_app=SomethingWithoutAnExtension
- The single `/` after the protocol is suspicious, and I assume the key to a redirect that would be unfortunate. But how does this work? What's going on here?
- I wondered if everything between the first two slashes would be ignored (I've heard of an exploit that works that way), but if so, I'm not sure how the rest of this string could do anything. There's not another layer of path that could be a URL,[^1] and the thing after `goto_app` doesn't end in `.exe` or the like. I don't know if port 2096 is special.
- I'm not going to _try_ it to find out, but I did try going to `https:/mydomain.example` (a domain I control, not literally "mydomain"), using one slash instead of two, and Brave took me to my site. I tried looking it up in the [IETF URL spec](https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.html) (is that the right place?) but I didn't find the details I was looking for (or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place).
- How should this URL be parsed? How does this presumed scam work?
- [^1]: If the URL were instead `https:/example.com:2096/something.example?goto...` then I would assume that everything up to the second slash is a decoy and it would take me to `htttps://something.example?...`. But there aren't enough slashes in the suspicious URL I received.
#2: Post edited
by
Monica Cellio
·
2023-10-31T18:00:23Z (6 months ago)
- I (well, my spam trap) received email that I know is a scam, but I'm trying to understand how it works. The message contains a URL of the following form:
- https:/example.com:2096/?goto_app=SomethingWithoutAnExtension
- The single `/` after the protocol is suspicious, and I assume the key to a redirect that would be unfortunate. But how does this work? What's going on here?
- I wondered if everything between the first two slashes would be ignored (I've heard of an exploit that works that way), but if so, I'm not sure how the rest of this string could do anything. There's not another layer of path that could be a URL,[^1] and the thing after `goto_app` doesn't end in `.exe` or the like. I don't know if port 2096 is special.
I'm not going to _try_ it to find out, but I did try going to `https:/mydomain.org` (a domain I control, not literally "mydomain"), using one slash instead of two, and Brave took me to my site. I tried looking it up in the [W3C URL spec](https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.html) but I didn't find the details I was looking for (or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place).- How should this URL be parsed? How does this presumed scam work?
- [^1]: If the URL were instead `https:/example.com:2096/something.com?goto...` then I would assume that everything up to the second slash is a decoy and it would take me to `htttps://something.com?...`. But there aren't enough slashes in the suspicious URL I received.
- I (well, my spam trap) received email that I know is a scam, but I'm trying to understand how it works. The message contains a URL of the following form:
- https:/example.com:2096/?goto_app=SomethingWithoutAnExtension
- The single `/` after the protocol is suspicious, and I assume the key to a redirect that would be unfortunate. But how does this work? What's going on here?
- I wondered if everything between the first two slashes would be ignored (I've heard of an exploit that works that way), but if so, I'm not sure how the rest of this string could do anything. There's not another layer of path that could be a URL,[^1] and the thing after `goto_app` doesn't end in `.exe` or the like. I don't know if port 2096 is special.
- I'm not going to _try_ it to find out, but I did try going to `https:/mydomain.org` (a domain I control, not literally "mydomain"), using one slash instead of two, and Brave took me to my site. I tried looking it up in the [IETF URL spec](https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.html) (is that the right place?) but I didn't find the details I was looking for (or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place).
- How should this URL be parsed? How does this presumed scam work?
- [^1]: If the URL were instead `https:/example.com:2096/something.com?goto...` then I would assume that everything up to the second slash is a decoy and it would take me to `htttps://something.com?...`. But there aren't enough slashes in the suspicious URL I received.
#1: Initial revision
by
Monica Cellio
·
2023-10-31T17:56:34Z (6 months ago)
What does this suspicious URL structure do?
I (well, my spam trap) received email that I know is a scam, but I'm trying to understand how it works. The message contains a URL of the following form:
https:/example.com:2096/?goto_app=SomethingWithoutAnExtension
The single `/` after the protocol is suspicious, and I assume the key to a redirect that would be unfortunate. But how does this work? What's going on here?
I wondered if everything between the first two slashes would be ignored (I've heard of an exploit that works that way), but if so, I'm not sure how the rest of this string could do anything. There's not another layer of path that could be a URL,[^1] and the thing after `goto_app` doesn't end in `.exe` or the like. I don't know if port 2096 is special.
I'm not going to _try_ it to find out, but I did try going to `https:/mydomain.org` (a domain I control, not literally "mydomain"), using one slash instead of two, and Brave took me to my site. I tried looking it up in the [W3C URL spec](https://www.w3.org/Addressing/URL/url-spec.html) but I didn't find the details I was looking for (or maybe I'm looking in the wrong place).
How should this URL be parsed? How does this presumed scam work?
[^1]: If the URL were instead `https:/example.com:2096/something.com?goto...` then I would assume that everything up to the second slash is a decoy and it would take me to `htttps://something.com?...`. But there aren't enough slashes in the suspicious URL I received.