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Criminals Hosted Phishing Site on Home Office’s Crime Reduction site

Phishing fraudsters, who hacked a crime reduction Website of the Home Office, used it to host an Italian phishing site on June 2, 2008, as reported by The Register on June 3, 2008,

A Remote File Inclusion (RFI) exploit was employed to launch the phishing site off the Webserver hosting crimereduction.homeoffice.gov.uk. According to security experts, a user, who is not aware of the working of RFI, might disclose the name of the vulnerable system without knowing its exact consequences, but unwittingly pass over its control elsewhere.

The security experts also say that the attack enables the exploit's author to access many more systems without the need of person to exploit the vulnerability and to scan for finding the vulnerable application.

However, with the current SQL injection onto the Italian Website, a Web page looking similar to the Poste.it Website was launched to make it appear as if it sent by the homeoffice.gov domain. Poste.it is an Italian bank's Website and is often a target of phishers' attacks.

Meanwhile, PrevX, an Internet security firm, which spotted the attack, thinks that the phishing fraudsters employed the POST technique to acquire the data provided by prospective marks. This possibly was one reason why the fraudsters chose a government site, as reported by The Register on June 3, 2008.

However, on the early morning of June 2, 2008, the Home Office removed the malicious material from its Website. The attack, which delivered harmful content, is one of the latest example to show how cyber criminals exploiting security vulnerabilities on reputable Websites.

Also, attacks using SQL Injection technique have become a popular attack strategy lately. The long time method applied to hijack thousands of legitimate Websites including the UK government and the US Department of Homeland Security sites in May 2008 has been used to attack a crime reduction site of the Home Office.

According to Jacques Erasmus, Head of malware Research, Prevx, the hack of Crime Reduction site by cyber criminals is extremely humiliating to the Home Office. Erasmus said that it is like a local swindler hiding in the police station and jabbing the wallets of people who visit the place, as reported by The Register on June 3, 2008.

Related article: Criminals Hack With More Evil Tactics

» SPAMfighter News - 6/18/2008

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