Connect with us

SEO

21 Common Marketing Interview Questions & Answers

Published

on

21 Common Marketing Interview Questions & Answers

Marketing interviews are unpredictable, and there’s no wonder. There are many different marketing roles and candidates with many backgrounds, skills, needs, and wants. Yet some questions get asked and answered repeatedly in interview rooms everywhere.

I’ve been to many marketing interviews. To some as an interviewee, to most of them as an interviewer. There are likely hundreds of different interview questions I asked or that employers asked me. But what are the most common ones, and what should you look for in an answer?

I skimmed through many other similar articles and wrote down questions that appeared multiple times to answer this question. No matter what marketing position you’re applying for, some of the following 21 questions will be a topic of conversation during the interview:

  1. Why are you pursuing a career in marketing?
  2. What makes you interested in this role?
  3. What are your responsibilities in your current role?
  4. Why are you looking to make a change?
  5. What’s your most significant career achievement?
  6. How do you work best?
  7. What are your strongest skills?
  8. What are your weaknesses?
  9. What resources do you use to develop your marketing skills?
  10. What marketing book have you read recently?
  11. What marketing campaign did you recently like and why?
  12. What marketing tools can you use well?
  13. Tell me about a difficult problem that you had to solve recently. What did you do?
  14. Tell me about a failed campaign that you worked on. What did you learn from it?
  15. Tell me about a successful campaign that you worked on. What was your contribution?
  16. How do you measure a campaign’s success?
  17. Who do you think is our target market?
  18. How do you manage the launch of a new product?
  19. What new marketing tactic have you tried recently? Why did you choose it, and what did you learn?
  20. What are your salary expectations?
  21. Do you have any questions?

Let’s look into each of those questions and how to answer them.

1. Why are you pursuing a career in marketing?

Often seen as an icebreaker, this question can reveal quite a bit about the candidate. Every employer wants to hire people with motivation other than “it pays a pretty penny.”

There are many reasons people are interested in working in the marketing field. It’s up to you to come up with an honest answer, but some of the reasons I’ve heard are:

  • Always learning new things
  • Interesting, non-monotonous work
  • A way to express creativity
  • Many career advancement opportunities and room for growth
  • The psychological aspect of better understanding human behavior
  • Great community
  • Suitable for remote work
  • Being the “good guy” in a field that’s often frowned upon by the general public

However, there’s nothing wrong with also mentioning the money. Some marketing roles can be very lucrative.

2. What makes you interested in this role?

If the candidate is not enthusiastic about the role, it’s a red flag for many hiring managers.

Let’s be honest. Many jobs aren’t that exciting. But there must be some reason you chose to apply. Maybe it looked like a suitable starting position for your career goals, or the company seemed a great place to work, or you like using the company’s products and want to be a part of spreading the word?

Being a massive fan of the company and its products was one of my biggest motivations to join Ahrefs back in 2019.

3. What are your responsibilities in your current role?

Unless you’re applying for your first job, be prepared to answer a few questions about your current and previous roles.

The only wrong way to answer this is to exaggerate or lie. It could backfire during follow-up questions or even when verifying the information by talking to your (former) colleagues.

4. Why are you looking to make a change?

You’ll likely get asked this if you’re looking for a new job while still working for someone else. This question is beneficial to both sides—the interviewer will learn more about your motivations, and you’ll learn whether the company seems like a good fit for you.

For example, you might not be content with your current work-life balance. If the new role requires you to often travel for business and work overtime, you might be better off looking elsewhere.

However, these reasons often revolve around stagnation and limited career or compensation growth. If this is the case for you, be honest. I often saw candidates being too shy to talk about wanting to earn more.

5. What’s your most significant career achievement?

If you’ve already got a few years of experience on your career record, be prepared to share your proudest achievements.

However, while it’s natural to think about all the marketing campaigns you were part of, the great ideas that led to massive wins, etc., don’t limit yourself to purely performance achievements.

For example, even before joining Ahrefs as an SEO & marketing educator, I’d say that my biggest achievement was contributing to other peoples’ growth as marketers. Nothing motivates me more than people reaching out to tell me how my lecture, workshop, presentation, or article helped them.

6. How do you work best?

Would you fit the team, the company’s culture, and their management style? This question isn’t explicitly related to marketing, but it’s crucial information for both parties.

Here are a few contrasts. Some people like having a list of tasks assigned to them; others prefer to create their own tasks. Some candidates perform best when they have flexible hours working from home; others like the “9 to 5” office life.

You should know what works best for you in terms of organizing your time, work-life balance, workspace, and collaboration.

7. What are your strongest skills?

You might also encounter this question masked as “what sets you apart from other candidates?”—which has a more competitive angle. This question is your chance to shamelessly pitch what you’re great at.

I recommend mentioning a mix of hard and soft skills. Hard skills are role-specific, so they could be anything from conducting great market research to writing great content that ranks in search engines. Soft skills are desirable regardless of the role, like critical thinking, communication, or leadership. They make you a better human and team player.

A 2016 survey by Smart Insights revealed the following soft skills as top requirements:

Bar graphs showing top three requirements are problem-solving, elegant thought articulation, and analytical thinking

8. What are your weaknesses?

I hope this question is losing its popularity and will eventually fade away. Why?

From the interviewer’s point of view, the candidate probably won’t give a completely honest answer. No one will open up about snapping at colleagues or their tendency to procrastinate half of their working hours on YouTube. I’m exaggerating, but you get the gist.

You want to be prepared for this one. I recommend choosing a middle ground kind of answer. Don’t try to make some weakness look like a strength (I work too much). On the other hand, don’t disclose something that can jeopardize being hired.

For example, my answer here could be that I can’t stand being micromanaged and need my own space for autonomy. I can imagine that this would be a problem in larger organizations with many management levels.

9. What resources do you use to develop your marketing skills?

How and where you learn about marketing could be used as a proxy to assess your knowledge and skills.

The thing is that many of the most popular industry blogs, YouTube channels, or influencers don’t create great marketing content. It’s often their own marketing and sales skills that made them popular, not the depth of information and value they provide.

I know this from my own experience. When I started in marketing, it was natural to follow the biggest accounts in our industry. But unfortunately, it takes a few years of consuming marketing information before you can easily separate the wheat from the chaff.

To some degree, this is also a subjective topic. If you want some inspiration, I wrote a short Twitter thread about stellar marketing resources:

10. What marketing book have you read recently?

This question may initially seem like a more specific version of the previous one, but it’s the opposite because marketing books don’t need to be explicitly about marketing.

For example, among the best “marketing” books I’ve read were pieces from Daniel Kahneman and Dan Ariely, who are both key figures in behavioral psychology and economy. Dale Carnegie and Robert Cialdini are other examples of popular non-marketer authors who can teach you a lot about marketing.

But what if you don’t read marketing books? What if you don’t like reading books at all? In today’s world of online long-form content across all mediums, you can be a great marketer and a generally knowledgeable person without reading books. Just steer the conversation towards the other mediums.

11. What marketing campaign did you recently like and why?

You don’t even have to be a marketer to answer this question. We’re all bombarded by marketing communications every day. But as marketers, we can likely appreciate the campaigns more, analyze them, and use them as inspiration.

There’s no right or wrong campaign to choose. You can only get bonus points by expanding on why you like it. The most recent campaign that stood out to me was Coinbase’s ad during the 2022 Super Bowl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIUD_NE1BDo

I’m sure many other marketers would pick this one too right now, but here are some reasons why I like it:

  • It instantly makes viewers wonder what’s going on. There’s no branding, so the only way to find out more is to scan the QR code.
  • It’s a stellar example of how creativity can beat all marketing and branding best practices.
  • The creative is as low cost as possible. Other companies spend millions on creating Super Bowl ads, whereas Coinbase used that money to buy twice the standard 30s airtime.
  • The outage of their website after scanning the QR code might as well have been an additional PR stunt. This only amplified their coverage in the media, which could be more valuable than making the website load for everyone.

12. What marketing tools can you use well?

No matter what marketing position you’re applying for, you need to know the basics of some marketing tools. And since a lot of marketing revolves around data, I would even consider spreadsheets as marketing tools.

The knowledge of specific tools often gets mentioned in the job description. For example, we require a good understanding of our SEO platform for all marketing positions.

Are you going to do something on a laptop during the interview? Probably not. But it’s pretty easy to test this knowledge even without having the candidate use the tools. I often tested candidates who supposedly had a good grasp of Google Analytics by asking about specific metrics or how they read and interpreted sample reports.

13. Tell me about a difficult problem that you had to solve recently. What did you do?

This question is one of those “how do you work under pressure?” questions. No one can assess your ability in these situations until they see you in one. But the interviewer can undoubtedly learn a thing or two about your problem-solving skills.

Many of us encounter difficult problems regularly. You have a chance to describe a challenging situation, but you managed to resolve it very well. Of course, the more impactful the decisions were, the better. Just make sure they were based on something better than a “gut feeling” that we marketers sometimes like to trust.

14. Tell me about a failed campaign that you worked on. What did you learn from it?

Things can’t always go as planned, so it’s only natural that some of our marketing campaigns fail. It can feel unpleasant at the time, but these happenings provide the best learning opportunities. You just have to leverage it—and that’s where this question is pointing.

For example, I failed at creating a Wikipedia page for Ahrefs. It’s a lot of work that involves many tasks, so we might as well call it a campaign. However, I used that experience to write one of the most in-depth and actionable articles on how to create a Wiki page. Those ~4,000 words already went through thorough revisions and editing, so I’m sure you can talk about your experience for a minute or two.

15. Tell me about a successful campaign that you worked on. What was your contribution?

This question is obviously similar to the previous ones, but it’s focused more on planning, running, and evaluating a marketing campaign and your role in it.

If you’re thinking about many campaigns, choose one where you played a significant role. It wouldn’t sound good to dive into an impactful campaign before telling the interviewer you were more of a bystander.

16. How do you measure a campaign’s success?

According to this research by AMA, nearly 50% of marketing leaders reported a lack of people who can link marketing analytics to practice. If the position requires analyzing and interpreting data (most marketing jobs do), be prepared to be asked about marketing data, analytics, or even some basic statistics.

The best short answer here is “it depends,” but it’s evident that the interviewer wants to hear you describe a few marketing KPIs and possibly even some proxy metrics related to those KPIs.

For example, suppose you’re asked or want to talk about an SEO campaign. In that case, you could say that a universal SEO KPI is search visibility (also known as organic share of voice) and that contributing indicators are relevant organic traffic and keyword rankings.

17. Who do you think is our target market?

There’s likely no better question to test whether a candidate did their homework and checked the company’s website and products. In the case of some companies, they provide the answers right on the homepage:

Ahrefs' homepage

I’m undoubtedly biased, but it’s pretty clear that we offer products for anyone who wants to do SEO—from beginners (usually SMBs and individual business owners) through SEO pros to enterprise clients (hinted at the top navigation bar).

No one expects you to be spot on in identifying all target segments that make up their target market. But you should be able to deduce a fair bit from the company’s communication and their products.

18. How do you manage the launch of a new product?

Let’s face it; an experienced marketer could probably start an hour-long monologue in response to this question. A junior one would be pretty lost. I’m not a massive fan of this question, but it appears in many other articles about marketing interview questions, so we’d better cover it.

You will always get asked this question in a specific context. If you’re applying for a social media marketing role, you don’t need to develop a complete go-to-market strategy. Put yourself in the role and think about all the tasks you might have to do when launching a new product. In social media marketing, it could be:

  • Come up with teasers as social media posts before the launch
  • Prepare product launch announcement posts
  • Reveal the product to selected influencers and media beforehand, get them to try it, use them for amplification
  • Create visuals for all posts and ads
  • Plan promotion campaigns
  • Come up with a series of posts that help with onboarding and making the best of use of the product

19. What new marketing tactic have you tried recently? Why did you choose it, and what did you learn?

We marketers always have new technologies, platforms, and tactics to try. In fact, many marketers these days spend most of their time on advertising and promotion. As a result, they don’t engage much in the vast array of other marketing activities:

Pie chart of 4 Ps of marketing; chart shows advertising only makes up tiny fraction of marketing

I’m pointing towards the ideal answers here in the reverse order. You should only choose new shiny tactics, techniques, tips, hacks (or whatever you call them) if they fit into your marketing strategy. TikTok might be the hottest platform for a while, but that isn’t a reason to use it for business.

Think about something new or unorthodox that you used recently because it had the potential to get you closer to your marketing objectives. It doesn’t matter what it is as long as it makes sense from the strategic perspective.

16 Marketing Tactics That Work

20. What are your salary expectations?

For many, money talk could be one of the most uncomfortable parts of the interview—so you’d better come prepared.

First of all, do diligent research about salaries, compensation packages, and companies’ budgets for your roles in your area. Look at HR portals, government statistics and open job positions with disclosed salaries. Ask your friends and acquaintances who could know this information.

Check multiple sources of information. For example, Glassdoor states that the median compensation for marketing managers in the US is around $95k, while the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates $141k.

For 100% remote jobs, there are now many companies that offer globally competitive salaries, so you might as well look at US data even if you’re elsewhere.

After you have a good grasp of the compensation landscape, I’d urge you to at least get an idea about the salary range before you invest too much time and energy into the hiring process. The worst-case scenario for both parties is when you find out too late that there isn’t a possible compromise between the candidate’s expectations and the budget for the role.

So, do your research, get an idea of the salary range for the position you’re applying for, and this uncomfortable question can easily lead to a win-win situation.

21. Do you have any questions?

I always asked this at the end of my interviews. Not only is it the right thing to do to let the candidate ask about anything left unanswered, but it also signals that the candidate is interested in the position.

As the candidate, you should list what you want to cover during the interview. Feel free to bring it with you. It can contain any questions about the position, company, team, culture, or experiences of the interviewers. Also, feel free to ask if you’re unsure what’s coming up next in your hiring process, when you should ideally start if you’re hired, etc.

If the interviewer doesn’t ask this question and you’re interested in working there, initiate the conversation yourself at the end of the interview. You might even make an impression this way.

Final thoughts

You should now be prepared to answer the most common marketing interview questions. That’s only half of the victory, though. Most marketing roles require skills in specific areas like SEO, PPC, or branding. Those are the hard skills that take a lot of time to master.

Good luck with your next interview!

Do you have any questions? Ping me on Twitter.




Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address

SEO

Google Updating Cryptocurrency Advertising Policy For 2024

Published

on

By

Google Updating Cryptocurrency Advertising Policy For 2024

Google published an announcement of upcoming changes to their cryptocurrency advertising policies and advises advertisers to make themselves aware of the changes and prepare to be in compliance with the new requirements.

The upcoming updates are to Google’s Cryptocurrencies and related products policy for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. The changes are set to take effect on January 29th, 2024.

Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts are financial products that enable investors to trade shares in trusts holding substantial amounts of digital currency. These trusts provide investors with equity in cryptocurrencies without having direct ownership. They are also an option for creating a more diversified portfolio.

The policy updates by Google that are coming in 2024 aim to describe the scope and requirements for the advertisement of Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts. Advertisers targeting the United States will be able to promote these products and services as long as they abide by specific policies outlined in the updated requirements and that they also obtain certification from Google.

The updated policy changes are not limited to the United States. They will apply globally to all accounts advertising Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts.

Google’s announcement also reminded advertisers of their obligation for compliance to local laws in the areas where the ads are targeted.

Google’s approach for violations of the new policy will be to first give a warning before imposing an account suspension.

Advertisers that fail to comply with the updated policy will receive a warning at least seven days before a potential account suspension. This time period provides advertisers with an opportunity to fix non-compliance issues and to get back into compliance with the revised guidelines.

Advertisers are encouraged to refer to Google’s documentation on “About restricted financial products certification.”

The deadline for the change in policy is January 29th, 2024. Cryptocurrency Coin Trusts advertisers will need to pay close attention to the updated policies in order to ensure compliance.

Read Google’s announcement:

Updates to Cryptocurrencies and related products policy (December 2023)

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

SEO

SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore In 2024

Published

on

SEO Trends You Can’t Ignore In 2024

Most SEO trends fade quickly. But some of them stick and deserve your attention.

Let’s explore what those are and how to take advantage of them.

If you give ChatGPT a title and ask it to write a blog post, it will—in seconds.

This is super impressive, but there are a couple of issues:

  • Everyone else using ChatGPT is creating the same content. It’s the same for users of other GPT-powered AI writing tools, too—which is basically all of them.
  • The content is extremely dull. Sure, you can ask ChatGPT to “make it more entertaining,” but it usually overcompensates and hands back a cringe version of the same boring content.

In the words of Gael Breton:

How to take advantage of this SEO trend

Don’t use AI to write entire articles. They’ll be boring as heck. Instead, use it as a creative sparring partner to help you write better content and automate monotonous tasks.

For example, you can ask ChatGPT To write an outline from a working title and a list of keywords (which you can pull from Ahrefs)—and it does a pretty decent job.

Prompt:

Create an outline for a post entitled “[working title]” based on these keywords: [list]

Result:

ChatGPT's outline for a blog post. Pretty good!ChatGPT's outline for a blog post. Pretty good!

When you’ve written your draft, you can ask to polish it in seconds by asking ChatGPT to proofread it.

ChatGPT proofreading my content and making it betterChatGPT proofreading my content and making it better

Then you can automate the boring stuff, like creating more enticing title tags…

ChatGPT writing enticing title tagsChatGPT writing enticing title tags

… and writing a meta description:

ChatGPT writing a meta descriptionChatGPT writing a meta description

If you notice a few months down the line that your content ranks well but hasn’t won the featured snippet, ChatGPT can help with that, too.

For example, Ahrefs tells us we rank in position 3 for “affiliate marketing” but don’t own the snippet.

Ahrefs showing featured snippets that we don't own, despite ranking in the top 3Ahrefs showing featured snippets that we don't own, despite ranking in the top 3

If we check Google, the snippet is a definition. Asking ChatGPT to simplify our definition may solve this problem.

ChatGPT rewriting a definition and making it betterChatGPT rewriting a definition and making it better

In short, there are a near-infinite number of ways to use ChatGPT (and other AI writing tools) to create better content. And all of them buck the trend of asking it to write boring, boilerplate articles from scratch.

Programmatic SEO refers to the creation of keyword-targeted pages in an automatic (or near automatic) way.

Nomadlist’s location pages are a perfect example:

Example of a page from NomadListExample of a page from NomadList

Each page focuses on a specific city and shares the same core information—internet speeds, cost, temperature, etc. All of this information is pulled programmatically from a database and the site gets an estimated 46k monthly search visits in total.

Estimated monthly search traffic to NomadListEstimated monthly search traffic to NomadList

Programmatic SEO is nothing new. It’s been around forever. It’s just the hot thing right now because AI tools like ChatGPT make it easier and more accessible than ever before.

The problem? As John Mueller pointed out on Twitter X, much of it is spam:

How to take advantage of this SEO trend

Don’t use programmatic SEO to publish insane amounts of spam that’ll probably get hit in the next Google update. Use it to scale valuable content that will stand the test of time.

For example, Wise’s currency conversion pages currently get an estimated 31.7M monthly search visits:

Estimated monthly search traffic to Wise's currently conversion pages (insane!)Estimated monthly search traffic to Wise's currently conversion pages (insane!)

This is because the content is actually useful. Each page features an interactive tool showing the live exchange rate for any amount…

The interactive currently conversion tool on Wise's pagesThe interactive currently conversion tool on Wise's pages

… the exchange rate over time…

The exchange rate over time graph on Wise's pagesThe exchange rate over time graph on Wise's pages

… a handy email notification option when the exchange rates exceed a certain amount…

The email notification option on Wise's pagesThe email notification option on Wise's pages

… handy conversion charts for popular amounts…

The handy conversion charts on Wise's pagesThe handy conversion charts on Wise's pages

… and a comparison of the cheapest ways to send money abroad in your chosen currency:

The useful comparison table on Wise's pagesThe useful comparison table on Wise's pages

It doesn’t matter that all of these pages use the same template. The data is exactly what you want to see when you search [currency 1] to [currency 2].

That’s probably why Wise ranks in the top 10 for over 66,000 of these keywords:

Wise's keyword rankings for currency conversion pagesWise's keyword rankings for currency conversion pages

Looking to take advantage of programmatic content in 2024 like Wise? Check out the guide below.

People love ChatGPT because it answers questions fast and succinctly, so it’s no surprise that generative AI is already making its way into search.

For example, if you ask Bing for a definition or how to do something basic, AI will generate an answer on the fly right there in the search results.

Bing's search results for "definition of mental health"Bing's search results for "definition of mental health"
Bing's search results for "how to add drop down list in google sheets"Bing's search results for "how to add drop down list in google sheets"

In other words, thanks to AI, users no longer have to click on a search result for answers to simple questions. It’s like featured snippets on steroids.

This might not be a huge deal right now, but when Google’s version of this (Search Generative Experience) comes out of beta, many websites will see clicks fall off a cliff.

How to take advantage of this SEO trend

Don’t invest too much in topics that generative AI can easily answer. You’ll only lose clicks like crazy to AI in the long run. Instead, start prioritizing topics that AI will struggle to answer.

How do you know which topics it will struggle to answer? Try asking ChatGPT. If it gives a good and concise answer, it’s clearly an easy question.

For example, there are hundreds of searches for how to calculate a percentage in Google Sheets every month in the US:

Estimated monthly search volume for "google sheets percentage formula" via Ahrefs' Keywords ExplorerEstimated monthly search volume for "google sheets percentage formula" via Ahrefs' Keywords Explorer

If you ask ChatGPT for the solution, it gives you a perfect answer in about fifty words.

ChatGPT's answer to the Google Sheets percentage calculation formulaChatGPT's answer to the Google Sheets percentage calculation formula

This is the perfect example of a topic where generative AI will remove the need to click on a search result for many.

That’s probably not going to be the case for a topic like this:

Example of a topic that AI shouldn't impact too muchExample of a topic that AI shouldn't impact too much

Sure. Generative AI might be able to tell you how to create a template—but it can’t make one for you. And even if it can in the future, it will never be a personal finance expert with experience. You’ll always have to click on a search result for a template created by that person.

These are the kinds of topics to prioritize in 2024 and beyond.

Sidenote.

None of this means you should stop targeting “simple” topics altogether. You’ll always be able to get some traffic from them. My point is not to be obsessed with ranking for keywords whose days are numbered. Prioritize topics with long-term value instead.

Bonus: 3 SEO trends to ignore in 2024

Not all SEO trends move the needle. Here are just a few of those trends and why you should ignore them.

People are using voice search more than ever

In 2014, Google revealed that 41% of Americans use voice search daily. According to research by UpCity, that number was up to 50% as of 2022. I haven’t seen any data for 2023 yet, but I’d imagine it’s above 50%.

Why you should ignore this SEO trend

75% of voice search results come from a page ranking in the top 3, and 40.7% come from a featured snippet. If you’re already optimizing for those things, there’s not much more you can do.

People are using visual search for shopping more than ever

In 2022, Insider Intelligence reported that 22% of US adults have shopped with visual search (Google Lens, Bing Visual Search, etc.). That number is up from just 15% in 2021.

Why you should ignore this SEO trend

Much like voice search, there’s no real way to optimize for visual search. Sure, it helps to have good quality product images, optimized filenames and alt text, and product schema markup on your pages—but you should be doing this stuff anyway as it’s been a best practice since forever.

People are using Bing more than ever before

Bing’s Yusuf Mehdi announced in March 2023 that the search engine had surpassed 100M daily active users for the first time ever. This came just one month after the launch of AI-powered Bing.

Why you should ignore this SEO trend

Bing might be more popular than ever, but its market share still only stands at around ~3% according to estimates by Statcounter. Google’s market share stands at roughly 92%, so that’s the one you should be optimizing for.

Plus, it’s often the case that if you rank in Google, you also rank in Bing—so it really doesn’t deserve any focus.

Final thoughts

Keeping your finger on the pulse and taking advantage of trends makes sense, but don’t let them distract you from the boring stuff that’s always worked: find what people are searching for > create content about it > build backlinks > repeat.

Got questions? Ping me on Twitter X.



Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

SEO

Mozilla VPN Security Risks Discovered

Published

on

By

Mozilla VPN Security Risks Discovered

Mozilla published the results of a recent third-party security audit of its VPN services as part of it’s commitment to user privacy and security. The survey revealed security issues which were presented to Mozilla to be addressed with fixes to ensure user privacy and security.

Many search marketers use VPNs during the course of their business especially when using a Wi-Fi connection in order to protect sensitive data, so the  trustworthiness of a VNP is essential.

Mozilla VPN

A Virtual Private Network (VPN), is a service that hides (encrypts) a user’s Internet traffic so that no third party (like an ISP) can snoop and see what sites a user is visiting.

VPNs also add a layer of security from malicious activities such as session hijacking which can give an attacker full access to the websites a user is visiting.

There is a high expectation from users that the VPN will protect their privacy when they are browsing on the Internet.

Mozilla thus employs the services of a third party to conduct a security audit to make sure their VPN is thoroughly locked down.

Security Risks Discovered

The audit revealed vulnerabilities of medium or higher severity, ranging from Denial of Service (DoS). risks to keychain access leaks (related to encryption) and the lack of access controls.

Cure53, the third party security firm, discovered and addressed several risks. Among the issues were potential VPN leaks to the vulnerability of a rogue extension that disabled the VPN.

The scope of the audit encompassed the following products:

  • Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for macOS
  • Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Linux
  • Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Windows
  • Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for iOS
  • Mozilla VPN Qt6 App for Androi

These are the risks identified by the security audit:

  • FVP-03-003: DoS via serialized intent
  • FVP-03-008: Keychain access level leaks WG private key to iCloud
  • VP-03-010: VPN leak via captive portal detection
  • FVP-03-011: Lack of local TCP server access controls
  • FVP-03-012: Rogue extension can disable VPN using mozillavpnnp (High)

The rogue extension issue was rated as high severity. Each risk was subsequently addressed by Mozilla.

Mozilla presented the results of the security audit as part of their commitment to transparency and to maintain the trust and security of their users. Conducting a third party security audit is a best practice for a VPN provider that helps assure that the VPN is trustworthy and reliable.

Read Mozilla’s announcement:
Mozilla VPN Security Audit 2023

Featured Image by Shutterstock/Meilun

Source link

Keep an eye on what we are doing
Be the first to get latest updates and exclusive content straight to your email inbox.
We promise not to spam you. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Invalid email address
Continue Reading

Trending