When we surf the Internet we can find many dangerous web pages that put our security and privacy at risk. There are certain factors that we must look at to see if it is really safe or not. One of them is to see if it is encrypted. Now, why could an encrypted website be a danger too? We are going to talk about this in this article.
An encrypted website does not mean it is secure
Through insecure web pages a hacker can steal information, passwords or infect our computer. This means that we have to identify when a site is really trustworthy or a scam.
As we have indicated, one of the points to take into account is to see if a website is encrypted or not. That is, observe if it is HTTPS and has SSL encryption . This, first, can give us certain guarantees that this page will not filter our information, nor will it cause our data to be stolen on a public Wi-Fi network.
Now, the truth is that this in practice is not really something that tells us that a page is secure or not. We can come across websites that have SSL encryption and are actually created to infect computers and compromise our security.
Why can this happen? A hacker could easily obtain SSL certificates on the Internet. The fact of having an encrypted page, which appears with HTTPS, does not directly mean that it is secure and that we will not have any problem that could steal our data or sneak malware.
False sense of security
What generates an encrypted web page is a false sense of security. This makes many hackers use precisely this type of website to launch their attacks . They want the victim to believe that they are facing something safe, something reliable, in order to deceive.
They could, for example, put links to unencrypted third-party sites , where they ask us for personal data or log in and thus steal the password. Malware could also sneak in and the victim may unwittingly download it. This is something very used precisely to infect computers.
Through the malware that they can deploy through encrypted websites, they can take control of a computer. They could infect us with a Trojan that creates a back door. Also insert even keyloggers to steal passwords.
For all this, common sense is very important to avoid security problems. We must always take a good look at a website, beyond simply whether it is encrypted or not. On other occasions we have seen recommendations to avoid malware. You always have to avoid making mistakes that can serve as a gateway for intruders.
But beyond common sense, which is vital, we must also have security tools and of course have updated equipment. This will help reduce vulnerabilities that can be exploited by attackers in the event that a variety of malware sneaks up on us when visiting insecure sites.
Therefore, we can say that an encrypted web page does not mean that it is secure. Certain precautions must always be taken into account to avoid the entry of malware and any type of cyber attack.