URLs are often used as a point of access for attackers, who create malicious links that redirect to a spam or malicious website. Many e-commerce sites encounter this issue and the legitimacy of the URL is often not questioned by the users.
To answer this ongoing trend and provide users with a preliminary check before clicking or submitting a link to a security organisation, CIRCL has just launched an URL Abuse tool in order to review the security of an URL.
“Whenever you enter a link into our tool, the results could range from a potential to strong evidence that the submission is a malicious link, represented by yellow and red. The green means that the link is safe and blue provides additional information”, explains Alexandre Dulaunoy from CIRCL. The URL Abuse tool analyses a number of elements such as: the redirection of the links and to where they are pointing; the comparison of these links with different security black lists, and the history of DNS records and data.
For more information: https://www.circl.lu/services/urlabuse/