Where Does This Link Really Go?

About this interactive

What you are doing: reading each link the way the browser does, and typing the host it really connects to. The lesson’s rule. A URL follows the URI format: scheme://user@host/path?query. Anything between the scheme (http://) and an @ sign is a user name, not the site. So in http://www.google.com@10.1.30.23/ the browser connects to 10.1.30.23, and www.google.com is only decoration. Two checks. The @ only does this when it sits before the first slash after the scheme; an @ later on, in the path or the query, is just part of the page address. And the host can be an IP address written in a way you do not recognize: 0x before an octet means hexadecimal, a leading zero means octal. Type hosts exactly as they appear in the link, user parts as user, and number formats as one word: hexadecimal or octal.

What you'll learn

Read an obfuscated URL and name the host the browser really connects to, treating everything between the scheme and the @ sign as a user name
Recognize an IP address written in hexadecimal or octal inside a URL

Aligned to

CompTIA Security+

5.6 Given a scenario, implement security awareness practices.

CompTIA PenTest+

4.8 Given a scenario, perform social engineering attacks using the appropriate tools.

Key terms

URL Obfuscation: A technique that disguises a URL's true destination by encoding the target address using methods such as hexadecimal, octal, or username-field embedding to deceive users.
Uniform Resource Locator: A standardized address used to identify and locate specific resources on the web, consisting of components such as schema, host, directory, and file path.
Uniform Resource Identifier: A string of characters that uniquely identifies a specific resource on the internet, including components such as protocol, host, path, query, and fragment.
Hexadecimal Encoding: A base-16 numbering system used in URL obfuscation to represent IP address octets as hex values, masking the true destination from users.
Octal Encoding: A base-8 numbering system used in URL obfuscation to represent IP address octets as octal values, concealing the actual target address.

Topics

Url Obfuscation Uniform Resource Locator Interactive Fill In

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