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Elon Musk’s X botched an attempt to replace “twitter.com” links with “x.com” (arstechnica.com)

submitted 2 years ago by MicroWave@lemmy.world to c/news@lemmy.world

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Automatic text replacement let users spoof URLs ending in x, like netflix.com.

Elon Musk's clumsy brand shift from Twitter to X caused a potentially big problem this week when the social network started automatically changing "twitter.com" to "x.com" in links. The automatic text replacement reportedly applied to any URL ending in "twitter.com" even if it wasn't actually a twitter.com link.

The change apparently went live on X's app for iOS, but not on the web version. It seems to have been a problem for a day or two before the company fixed the automatic text replacement so that it wouldn't affect non-Twitter.com domains.

Security reporter Brian Krebs called the move "a gift to phishers" in an article yesterday. It was a phishing risk because scammers could register a domain name like "netflitwitter.com," which would appear as "netflix.com" in posts on X, but clicking the link would take a user to netflitwitter.com.

"A search at DomainTools.com shows at least 60 domain names have been registered over the past two days for domains ending in 'twitter.com,' although research so far shows the majority of these domains have been registered 'defensively' by private individuals to prevent the domains from being purchased by scammers," Krebs wrote.

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[-] zeppo@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

Nope, why would someone register carfatwitter.com if that was the case?

[+] quindraco@lemm.ee -9 points 2 years ago

You could read the article, it explains it.

[-] zeppo@lemmy.world 14 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

Are you serious?

As of April 8, 2024, the iOS Twitter (now X) client automatically replaces the text "twitter.com" in posts with "x.com" as part of its functionality. Therefore, for example, a URL that appears to be "netflix.com" will actually redirect to "netflitwitter.com" when clicked.

As another X user (@Arcticstar0) pointed out, "the actual link is unchanged. It's just the text placeholder that appears different. So the link goes to a different url than it appears."

It could work the way you're describing with the same effect, but that's not what's being described.

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

Quoting your quote, now with emphasis:

a URL that appears to be "netflix.com" will actually redirect to "netflitwitter.com" when clicked

So, as I said, the link text you see appears unchanged, but where it goes is changed. That's why it's a phishing concern.

[-] zeppo@lemmy.world 6 points 2 years ago

No, apparently what happens is people post netflitwitter.com, linking to netfltwitter.com, and the X app changes the visible link text to netflix.com but not the link target.

The way you're describing it is the reverse, like people post netflix.com and the link is changed to netflitwitter.com. That's not what they're doing. Or, if it was that people posted netflitwitter.com and it linked to netflix.com, how would that be a problem?

[-] quindraco@lemm.ee -1 points 2 years ago

No. If the link was left pristine, phishing would be impossible, because the original links we're discussing went to genuine sites and the displayed link would be obviously garbage.

The whole problem is that people are linking to netflitwitter with a display of netflitwitter, then the regex changes the link target, so you see the original, sane address, click on it, and get deceived into going to a target the regex fabricated.

[-] zeppo@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

That COULD be what happened, and it would have a similar effect, but it wasn’t what happened. If you read information about this that becomes apparent. They didn’t change the link target, they changed the link text only.

Someone registers spacetwitter.com and sets up an adversarial site. They then make an “X” post mentioning spacetwitter.com. The app creates a link to spacetwitter.com but changes the text to say spacex.com.

Please read this: https://krebsonsecurity.com/2024/04/twitters-clumsy-pivot-to-x-com-is-a-gift-to-phishers/

On April 9, Twitter/X began automatically modifying links that mention “twitter.com” to read “x.com” instead. But over the past 48 hours, dozens of new domain names have been registered that demonstrate how this change could be used to craft convincing phishing links — such as fedetwitter[.]com, which until very recently rendered as fedex.com in tweets.

Notice how it says modifying links that mention “twitter.com” to read “x.com” instead.

this post was submitted on 12 Apr 2024

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