Obfuscating and manipulating URLs
Obfuscating and manipulating URLs has long been used to assist in tricking an end user into clicking on a malicious site. These could be through various techniques such as using URL shortening, hiding the URL, using the IP address, and other functions. This can be used in emails or other types of interactive documents.
In this recipe, we will examine a couple of methods to obfuscate or manipulate URLs.
Getting ready
Let's ensure the following prerequisites:
- Kali Linux is running, and you are logged in as root
How to do it...
We will now review several methods of obfuscating URLS:
URL shortener
Let's work with a URL shortener first:
- From you main Kali screen, open a Firefox browser.
- Go to the https://goo.gl link. Enter a URL you want to shorten. The following is an example I'm using:
- Select
I'm not a Robot
and click onSHORTEN URL
:

- You will get an output...