Gmail Notifier Exploit

4. November 2007

 I use Gmail a lot for certain email addresses that I need to have access to from anywhere - and I also use Gmail Notifier. GMail notifier is a desktop application that checks for new email in the account logged in to, and displays a message and changes it's icon when there is new mail - similar to Outlook 2003 + .  

Well, early today I was browsing through a bunch of  let's say - questionable websites, looking for a very specific piece of information. I wasn't really paying a lot of attention to all the pop-ups 'cause I knew I was in a bad neighborhood ( i can't stand pop-up blockers). I also have pretty decent security on the machine I was surfing with - so I felt confident.  After I found what I wanted - I began closing windows. One of them was very familiar looking. It was an HTML duplicate of the Gmail Notfier login window pictured in this post. One of the sites I surfed through popped it up trying to get me to enter my Gmail account information. I can see how this must be working pretty well for them. The real GMail Notifier pops-up in a small nearly indentical window too. The HTML version was very close to a real G-Mail window in appearance, feel, and function. If I weren't a web developer myself I might have fallen for this trick. I wish now that I was paying more attention to the sites I was visiting or would have thought to take a screen shot while the window was up - but I didn't.

Anyway, just be warned. There are people out there faking GMail Notifier login's to try and steal your GMail login - most likey to get your friends email addresses to sell to spammers.

Google

Comments

11/4/2007 1:25:35 AM #
Oooo, that's EVIL.

BTW i'm still getting that "stop script" error when I come here.
11/4/2007 7:37:16 AM #
There are people who fake websites, so this is nothing big. It is important that we take the software from the correct place and we will be safe.

Phishing can never be stopped, similarly software forgery can't be stopped too and I am sure you use many softwares that has been cracked, do you think those softwares are 100% safe?

The best bet is to stay away from bad neighbour hoods.
11/4/2007 10:06:23 AM #
Browie - yep very EVIL indeed.

Tom - true it is nothing big - unless you are someone who doesn't know about this type of thing - which some of my readers don't/didn't.
Comments are closed