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NtG_UK | 1 year ago

Impressive, but haven’t we just handed crooks the perfect tool for crafting their next GOV.UK themed phishing site?

discuss

order

matteason|1 year ago

GOV.UK Frontend is already fully open source [0] with comprehensive documentation [1] and GDS encourage community contributions, libraries and resources [2]. If there was any worry about phishing that would be a question for GDS

[0] https://github.com/alphagov/govuk-frontend

[1] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/

[2] https://design-system.service.gov.uk/community/resources-and...

londons_explore|1 year ago

Also, copying an html page for phishing is easy - I'm sure the Google/Facebook login pages have been copied by hundreds of people already.

Phishers probably wouldn't even bother using a vue component - it's easier to copy the whole page from dev tools body.innerHTMl

baliex|1 year ago

This is impressive Matt, and I love the design system GDS has developed, but I'm not sure they want non-government services to use the system. From the second link you posted:

> Use this design system to make *government* services consistent with GOV.UK

Emphasis mine. Are GDS aware of this work? I am in no way affiliated with GDS by the way.

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I'm always wary of this kind of thing not being on a gov.uk domain, which in this case is entirely appropriate because it's not in anyway official or endorsed by GDS. Not for any direct phishing/crooks concerns as raised above, but because it waters down the impact of this kind of thing always being on gov.uk domains.

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Edit: I'd be _very_ surprised if GDS don't take issue with you having "GOV.UK" in the name given that it is no way associated with gov.uk

globular-toast|1 year ago

That's a good thing, because people need to learn how to really check the authenticity of a website and not base it on how it looks. See security by obscurity.

unsupp0rted|1 year ago

Crooks don't need component libraries to mimic government websites. And their victims probably wouldn't notice one way or the other.

tialaramex|1 year ago

There's an old Microsoft study examining what might help users to not give crooks their credentials. The participants used their real credentials to attempt a real bank transaction, and Microsoft studied what might count as a red flag and stop them from attempting this transaction on a bogus site, variations in UI warnings, layout etc..

Nothing. Nothing you could do stopped users from persisting in their goal, despite all the red flags, humans get stuck on a mission, it's called "Get-there-itis" and it kills private pilots, it causes those "How could you be such a moron?" bridge strikes you see on Youtube, it's a defect in human psychology, you have to design knowing that this defect exists.

So what works? Brick Wall UX. When the user can't do the wrong thing they won't. They'll still try of course, but now they can't succeed (in giving their credentials to crooks).

dotancohen|1 year ago

Just wait until you see what crooks can do with Telegram, or Megaupload, or the Linux kernel, or Microsoft Excel.

samstave|1 year ago

Better yet, this creates the ability for prompts such as:

"Using design system from govukvue.org create an app that will [check for service] from [this gov.uk url] using the same hooks and design components to give me a dashboard of [benefits] [contacts_for_benefits] [these_other-compnents_to_query] as a flas app and conect it to my [db] and give me a mobile first view - wrap it in a docker on my DO droplet, use the cred from the .env"