A new discovery puts at risk, once again, the security of emails. This time it's about RopeMaker, which, contrary to what its literal name may suggest, are the initials of Remotely Originated Post-delivery Andmail Manipulation Aattacks Keeping Andmail Rrisky.
Through this vulnerability, a legitimate email that passes all security and spam filters can become, when opened by the recipient, a malicious email. How is this possible? Thanks to the magic of HTML and CSS.
These names may sound like Chinese to you, but they are the ones responsible for shaping and styling emails, as well as web pages. Thanks to these two technologies, it's possible to make text bold, italic, or colored, etc.
The problem lies in the fact that these technologies run on the client side, I mean, when the user opens a web page or an email. In the case in question, the danger consists of an attacker being able to send a legitimate message, but through CSS make changes so that, For example, a web link to a harmless page changes to redirect to malicious pages.
The vulnerability has been demonstrated in traditional desktop applications such as Apple Mail, Outlook and Mozilla Thunderbird. On the other hand, services known as webmailhave not been affected.
Although the vulnerability has not yet been actively exploited, it will undoubtedly be a future attack vector. That is why, now more than ever, hay que desconfiar y verificar siempre los enlaces y adjuntos que recibamos en nuestro correo.