The Opera browser team has announced a new clipboard monitoring and protection feature called Paste Protection in the latest Opera 84 Developer update.
It is designed to protect content hijacking and snooping when some malicious app monitors users' clipboards and modifies private details like bank accounts or crypto wallets in an attempt to trick users into transferring the funds into a different account.
According to the developers, Opera Browser will monitor the clipboard and will display a new warning if an external application manages to change the clipboard content. The new security feature is already available in the latest version of Opera Developer for Windows, macOS, and Linux. To try it out, upgrade Opera Developer to version 84.0.4274.0 or higher.
However, the developers have not disclosed exactly which information and in what form is recognized as delicate. IBAN and Bitcoin wallet addresses qualify as sensitive data that require safety, however unusually, bank card numbers, email addresses, lengthy passwords, and SSNs aren’t handled as such.
“This festive update brings a new feature that makes browsing safer. One potential risk while browsing is the hijacking of your clipboard. By doing this, someone can replace a bank account number or crypto wallet identifier with a different one,” Opera explained in the blog post.
“Opera has come up with a secure way to protect you from this. When you copy sensitive data in Opera, the data is monitored for changes for some time or until you paste the data. If the data is changed by an external application, a warning is displayed.”
Why safeguarding a Clipboard is necessary?
Clipboard safety is a vital feature that all internet browsers should note because it safeguards customers from numerous malware infections that try and hijack a clipboard.
Clipboard hijacker is a malicious software used by threat actors to make fraudulent cryptocurrency transactions. Attackers do this by altering cryptocurrency wallet addresses from those saved in victims’ clipboards to others controlled by threat actors.
Most individuals do not memorize cryptocurrency addresses, so the cash or tokens will be sent to the menace actors’ wallets. Customers solely understand the error when the belongings do not appear at the intended address. Nevertheless, it is too late by then, and there’s no strategy to get well the funds.
