Crypto crime research group SEAL Org unveils new way to report potential phishing sites

The Security Alliance, the crypto crime investigation unit better known as SEAL, unveiled a new way to report potential phishing sites that use increasingly sophisticated ways for hackers to conceal their tracks.

“Traditionally, automated scanning of URLs encounters all the problems typically faced by web scrapers, including CAPTCHA and anti-bot protections. In addition, scammers have developed ‘cloaking’ features to serve benign content to suspected web scanners,” SEAL wrote on Monday. “What we needed was a way to see what the user was seeing.”

SEAL’s new “Verifiable Phishing Reporter” uses a new cryptographic scheme designed by the team called “TLS attestations” that enables whitehats — ethical hackers who identify and report security flaws — to inspect websites as they appear to potential victims. 

The key issue, SEAL notes, is that the internet’s Transport Layer Security does not natively support the generation of session transcripts, opening the door for a third party to “simply lie about what the remote server said.”

“Through this program, users can submit attestations for sites that they believe contain phishing content. We will then verify the submission and ensure that it is both properly signed and also contains evidence of malicious activity,” SEAL wrote in a blog. 

According to SEAL, Verifiable Phishing Reports was tested over the past month or so in a private beta release and will now be available publicly. 

The organization, officially launched in 2024, has previously released several tools designed to investigate and prevent fraud in the crypto ecosystem, including the SEAL-911 Telegram channel to report instances of crime and SEAL-ISAC, or Information Sharing and Analysis Center, that connects victims to expert researchers.

SEAL, which operates as a non-profit, has received backing from a16z crypto, Ethereum Foundation, and Paradigm, among dozens of other notable donors and partners. 

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