Browser Security News

The lock-and-key icon was broken. The site-authentication image was not there. A security message popped up, warning that the site was not properly certified. And still, more than half of them entered a password and tried to log in.

That’s the bottom-line finding of a new study from researchers at Harvard University and MIT, who conducted a live test of banking users to measure the effectiveness of browser-based authentication and anti-phishing features earlier this year. The research is scheduled to be presented at the IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy next month.

In the study, 67 customers of a single bank were asked to perform common online banking tasks. As they logged in, they were presented with increasingly conspicuous visual clues that suggested they might be about to enter a phishing or other fraudulent site. Dark Reading - Desktop Security - Study: Browser Warnings Don’t Work - Security News Analysis