Dropbox’s URL Shortener Abused by Spammers - yinglingcurness

Spammers are abusing a Dropbox feature that lets users share a shortened link, directing people to websites selling problematical pharmaceuticals, according to security vender Symantec.

Dropbox, the single file-sharing and synchronisation service, has a public pamphlet that is dedicated to share-out content. Dropbox's Universal resource locator (uniform resource locator) shortening religious service can be wont to create links to content in that populace folder.

Spammers have seized along this and are creating shortened golf links to images stored in the public folder. The images contain a link to online pharmaceutical retailers, wrote Goug Johnston, a major computer programmer at Symantec.

"We saw all over 1200 unique Dropbox URLs being used in Spam over a 48-hour full stop," Johnston wrote. "We suffer informed Dropbox, providing them with the engorged list of URLs."

Spammers sustain often abused URL shortening services. The services are discriminatory to spammers since citizenry can't immediately tell where the shortened link will take them.

Chirrup introduced its ain shortening service, but as a certificate valuate resolves the data link to see if it has been rumored as malicious. Twitter's URL shortener wish too display the direct connect if users hover the mouse pointer over the shortened link to give users a better idea of where they are departure.

But spammers are a creative clustering, and lately they've besides been victimization open-source computer software to create their own shortening services.

Symantec has noticed at least one other direction Dropbox has been abused. A Brazilian malware campaign with spam messages in Portuguese included links to image files hosted on Dropbox, Johnston wrote. The files weren't images, though, but malicious computer software.

Dropbox couldn't immediately be reached for comment.

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Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/468992/dropboxs_url_shortener_abused_by_spammers-2.html

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