Search Engine Abuse in Popular Social Networks

Fri, 17 May 2019 12:03:11 +0000

This is a blog post by Mazin Ahmed and Khaled Farah.

Introduction #

Popular social networks are affected by a “by-design” security vulnerability that allows unauthorized parties to control their search history. Unauthorized parties are capable of inserting their own chosen keywords in the search history of Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Technical Details #

The bug is relatively simple in terms of explanation and exploitation. It has been reported by us, and possibly by others to the social networks, and it was marked as an “acceptable risk” by the affected companies. We agree it’s a low risk issue, but due to the trivial exploitation of this attack, it may be a good idea to implement a fix. We’re releasing a blog article to open a public discussion regarding the vulnerability.

Security on Mazin Ahmed

Search Engine Abuse in Popular Social Networks

Introduction #

Technical Details #