Team uncovers the danger caused by subdomains

The internet is full of dangers: Sensitive data can be leaked, malicious websites can allow hackers to access private computers. The Security & Privacy Research Unit at TU Wien in collaboration with Ca' Foscari University has now uncovered a new important security vulnerability that has been overlooked so far. Large websites often have many subdomains—for example, "sub.example.com" could be a subdomain of the website "example.com." With certain tricks, it is possible to take control of such subdomains. And if that happens, new security holes open up that also put people at risk who simply want to use the actual website (in this example, example.com).