Towards Safe Use of Short URLs

Abstract

Cyber attack is one of the most serious threats facing many organizations in the Internet era. In addition to hardening computer and network systems, it is important to surely deliver security information to end users. This paper presents a method and system for safe-browsing, especially of shortened URL links. Short URLs may be utilized for malicious activities to redirect users to unexpected resources, e.g. phishing and malware, by obscuring the final destinations. The proposed method enables users to know how safe a particular Web resource might be before users dereference it. Our system retrieves and delivers safety information of the long URLs on user’s demand by a simple operation.