MartinGeorgiev
Latest
Shortened URLs make it easy to spy on people
Security researchers have discovered that short URLs are able to be brute-forced, potentially exposing personal data to anyone motivated to look. The issue was found by Martin Georgiev and Vitaly Shmatikov after looking at the abbreviated web addresses used by companies like Google, Microsoft and bit.ly. The standard Google Maps URL, for instance, takes up around 150 characters, but for ease of use, the product offered a six-character alternative. But a combination of six-characters is small enough that it's possible to break simply with trial and error, exposing your cloud storage files and mapping requests to the world.
