Launch HN: Apozy (YC W17) – Use browsing habits to stop phishing and spot breaches
I’m Rick, the founder of Apozy. We’re a YC-backed company in the current batch and we've created a browser extension that stops people from getting hacked by things like phishing and malware. We're excited to get your feedback, hear your ideas, and answer questions!
I’ve been a hacker and penetration tester for 10 years. I started out by poking around people’s computers in 7th grade, then moved to poking SQL databases behind forms around high school. I eventually wrote a talk about session hijacking on MySpace in 2007 and was absolutely beyond horrified to stand in front of a bunch of people and pretend I know WTF I’m doing.
Soon after I was hacking Fortune 500 companies at a few consulting firms and decided that phishing was a way bigger problem than people really knew at the time. That ended up being right, considering it’s now the most successful attack vector for breaching companies. I wanted to change the way people solved this problem and that’s how Apozy was born. I introduced the idea to my now cofounder, Erhan, and he was onboard almost immediately. Erhan was the best developer I knew, had run a development firm in the past and was a hacker by hobby.
Fast forward to today, we’re busy building our solution to next-gen attacks. Apozy’s browser extension immunizes you against phishing and malware attacks. Phishing is out of control--1 in 3 companies fall victim to CEO fraud emails alone--and the current approach of blacklisting sites can't keep up. Instead, Apozy analyzes your browsing habits to stop you from entering data into suspicious sites that don't fit your usage patterns. We also aim to protect privacy by providing objective site privacy ratings, stopping trackers, and upgrading connections to HTTPS. Apozy is currently free to download on the Chrome store and soon will be on Firefox.
To check out Apozy, you can visit our site at https://www.apozy.com or head over to the Chrome store at https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/apozy-trusted-brow....
35 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 46.7 ms ] threadThe reason why we're better at that than an AdBlock is because we use a whitelist approach. When using a whitelist, all the newest sites and attacks are blocked by default. AdBlock will always be slightly behind on that. Additionally, AdBlock won't protect you from inputting your credentials into a phishing site if you somehow end up on a bad site. As a side benefit, since we don't scan the DOM, we don't slow anything down!
What representation are you using for each site (ie a sparse vector, full text, etc)? How do you compare newly visited sites to old ones?
If so, what bits are you sending? Just the top level domain, just FQDN, entire URL, or are you tracking engagement time on websites as well? How long will you maintain, or plan to maintain, the user's browsing history?
Any plans on monetizing the consumer end of this to build a profile of where the users are spending their time?
If you're opted into privacy scoring it sends only the FQDN of the current site to our service. We conduct privacy scoring on the server side because it would slow down the browser otherwise. If you're opted into community protection, CSP violations are sent with the URL. This allows us to detect undiscovered malicious sites and share them back to the community.
Currently we have no plan to share any information to monetize on the consumer end. We make money by enabling businesses to control fine grain permissions on corporate rollouts.
Maybe I'm not getting how this works, but how can a service like this function without sending the URL (or FQDN etc) to a remote service? It's too much data to have the entire map of all servers on the internet bundled locally (probably a pain to update too...). That said, what does it mean to use this plugin but not opt-in? Is that possible, or are you referring to users opt-in as part of the install?
Using the extension without opting in means you don't see site privacy grades but you're still protected using a Trust on First Use model of security created with your browsing history.
Okay so the local version is comparing the user's current page vs. the sites they've gone to prior? And if it seems off based on some heuristics it flags the page. Interesting idea.
Wouldn't work for me though as I have my browser set to nuke everything each time it's closed.
> Using the extension without opting in means you don't see site privacy grades but you're still protected using a Trust on First Use model of security created with your browsing history.
I originally thought it was just this piece which would need some type of client / server interaction to either fetch the "bad lists" or send the current URL/FQDN for validation.
If you don't nuke your local storage, it should still work. I do suspect it may be more annoying without any browser history to go on because there's no model built, so you have to 'prime the pump' a little more than a user who has history would have to.
-Erhan
I think opting in to the server side checking (which is a bit like the domain-based blacklists that modern browsers have, I think) is the best thing we've got at the moment, so long as that channel isn't compromised.
Citation needed. I'm sure the number will look like that at companies who open and forward the email, doubt it's that high off the cuff.