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Did I put my mac at risk?

I

ibyoohoo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 12, 2010
2
0
I was answering a classified add and was told to got to a website to view the pictures of a classic car. When I went there Firefox warned me I was logging in to a secure site without a password. Do you wish to proceed. I clicked yes and proceeded (dumb I know).

The site turned into my very own hotmail account with me logged in? Is there any chance I was set up to have my computer or hotmail account remotely accessed?

This is where I was told to go:


step55rm@msn.com

I should have remembered the golden rule "If it's to good to be true it is"

Just a little freaked out now. Ad is bougus and all contact info for the add is fake.
 
M

Makosuke

macrumors 604
Aug 15, 2001
6,662
1,242
The Cool Part of CA, USA
Actually, if that's exactly the URL you went to, then you were just logging into MSN. That's an email address, not a URL, but if you treat it as a URL and give it to your web browser what will happen is that it will attempt to connect to msn.com--which is Microsoft--as the username "step55rm." MSN likely just ignores the username--most websites do--and since you were already authenticated for Hotmail it just logged you in automatically. You can test by going to msn.com (without the step55rm@) and see if you end up at exactly the same page, or trying the same thing with a random set of characters before the @ symbol, in case MSN does something different when it sees a username with the request.

Again, if that's the exact URL you went to, I can't see any way that it could have done anything untoward, since I don't see MSN hosting any malicious code on a user account. It actually sounds like someone just accidentally typed an email address as a URL.

Now, if it was another URL that just LOOKED like that to you (this would only be if you clicked a link, rather than typed the URL in yourself), then you could have fallen into what's called a cross-site-scripting attack, where a malicious site attempts to load a friendly site with some extra bit of code injected, that will in turn allow it to extract information/login info/whatever from the friendly site. There's a lot of security focus on preventing that, though, so I'm skeptical that's what was happening here.
 
I

ibyoohoo

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 12, 2010
2
0
Makosuke said:
Actually, if that's exactly the URL you went to, then you were just logging into MSN. That's an email address, not a URL, but if you treat it as a URL and give it to your web browser what will happen is that it will attempt to connect to msn.com--which is Microsoft--as the username "step55rm." MSN likely just ignores the username--most websites do--and since you were already authenticated for Hotmail it just logged you in automatically. You can test by going to msn.com (without the step55rm@) and see if you end up at exactly the same page, or trying the same thing with a random set of characters before the @ symbol, in case MSN does something different when it sees a username with the request.

Again, if that's the exact URL you went to, I can't see any way that it could have done anything untoward, since I don't see MSN hosting any malicious code on a user account. It actually sounds like someone just accidentally typed an email address as a URL.

Now, if it was another URL that just LOOKED like that to you (this would only be if you clicked a link, rather than typed the URL in yourself), then you could have fallen into what's called a cross-site-scripting attack, where a malicious site attempts to load a friendly site with some extra bit of code injected, that will in turn allow it to extract information/login info/whatever from the friendly site. There's a lot of security focus on preventing that, though, so I'm skeptical that's what was happening here.
Click to expand...

Thank you for the reply. It was not a link so I just copied and pasted it into the web address. Strange thing is it was a Hotmail page I have never seen before. I have tried it from my PC at work and it says not a valid web address.
When I log in from my work PC it goes to the normal page. Only thing I can think of is that it did take me to a landing MSN page with me already logged in as you stated. I just have never seen that page before. It was loaded with content but had my hotmail info on it. I never go to MSN so that could be why it looked foreign.

I will try it again when I get home to my mac.

Thanks again for the help!!
 
M

Makosuke

macrumors 604
Aug 15, 2001
6,662
1,242
The Cool Part of CA, USA
ibyoohoo said:
It was loaded with content but had my hotmail info on it. I never go to MSN so that could be why it looked foreign.
Click to expand...
Almost guaranteed this is why it didn't look familiar; presumably MSN's customization login uses the same authentication system as Hotmail, so it automatically logged you in there. Google's wide range of services are exactly the same--if I'm logged into gmail, the Google search homepage recognizes me, as does Google Voice and a bunch of other services, including ones I never use.

I should add that while this may or may not have been a fake ad based on the other info, it's entirely possible that this is a real email address, and you'd get a response if you sent something to it.
 
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