this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2023
262 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43494 readers
1383 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy 🔍

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

Are they just an issue with wefwef or trying to use an exploit

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Another reason to block this TLD in the firewall solution.

[–] tarjeezy@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yea I've got both .zip and .mov blocked on my pihole

[–] Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.dev -1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

sorry i’m missing it. why this specific TLD? can’t they just use any TLD for this and achieve the same thing? is there something special with .mov?

[–] Thassar@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It's because it can cause confusion. The only difference between example.com/file.zip and example.com.file.zip is one uses a . and the other a / but both are valid domains. If somebody isn't paying much attention or they don't know much about domain names, they could click thinking to get a zip file from a legitimate site and end up going somewhere malicious instead. No other TLDs have this issue (well, I guess .com technically has it but who the hell is downloading and running com files these days) and they're pretty much exclusively used for this reason so it's a good idea to block them just to be safe.

[–] assa123@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

sorry, I didn't saw your answer and also replied! I didn't remember that (.)COM was also a file extension, but now, thanks to your reminder, I will play some DOS games ;)

[–] assa123@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

since .zip and .mov are recognizable file extensions, a url of the form google.com.docs.zelensky.zip could make people think that the domain is google.com pointing to a zip instead of the true domain, zelensky (dot) zip which probably would serve malicious content under that subdomain.

[–] Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.dev 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

sorry i’m missing it. why this specific TLD? can’t they just use any TLD for this and achieve the same thing? why is this a reason to block it?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Because .zip is a commonly used file extension.

[–] Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.dev -1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

i think i understand that part but why is this specific event "another reason to block this TLD"? can’t they just use any TLD for this and achieve the same thing? is there another inherit security issue with .zip that doesn't exist with other domains?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago (2 children)

They can and they do. Using a commonly known and used file extension to “hide” a malicious URL is just easier.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCVJsz7EODA

[–] PipedLinkBot@feddit.rocks 1 points 1 year ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=GCVJsz7EODA

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

[–] Snipe_AT@lemmy.atay.dev 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

gotcha ok i think i’m getting it. just to make sure i’m not missing anything, you’re saying that in this case it didn’t matter as in the end they could use any TLD and achieve the same effect.

but in general, threat actors hope to confuse people into thinking this “.zip” TLDs are only referencing local files instead of web addresses. right?

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago

but in general, threat actors hope to confuse people into thinking this “.zip” TLDs are only referencing local files instead of web addresses. right?

Exactly!