New Phishing Tactic Uses Real URLs, Fake Pages   11/9/2004 - 2,441 views, 6 Comments

Summary: A new phishing tactic discovered by Internet security company SurfControl allows the phisher to take advantage of a weakness in a targeted company's website, permitting them to use the company's real URL, while serving up bogus look-alike content. According to Susan Larson of SurfControl, ...

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A new phishing tactic discovered by Internet security company SurfControl allows the phisher to take advantage of a weakness in a targeted company’s website, permitting them to use the company’s real URL, while serving up bogus look-alike content.

According to Susan Larson of SurfControl, “This is definitely one of the most sophisticated phishing techniques we have ever seen. Up until now, an informed computer user stood a chance or being able to identify a suspicious URL if they were wary. This new technique demonstrates how computer criminals are engaged in a constantly evolving series of increasingly sophisticated efforts to defraud the public.”

The way that it works is that the phisher exploits a flaw in the search script native to the targeted site. This allows them to display their own content as a search result, thus leaving the legitimate URL intact in the address bar. Non-legitimate URLs are one of the ways that intended victims of phishers have typically been able to identify a potential scam before being taken in by it.

You can read more about this here.

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6 Comments »

  1. New Phishing Tactic Uses Real URLs, Fake Pages
    A new phishing tactic discovered by Internet security company SurfControl allows the phisher to take advantage of a weakness in a targeted company?s website, permitting them to use the company?s real URL, while serving up bogus look-alike content. Acco…

    Trackback by Lockergnome's Web Developers — 11/9/2004 @ 2:56 am

  2. Aunty Spam- this big orange box on the right
    covers part of the words in your articles.
    It would be nice to be able to read the whole
    thing.
    Thanks

    Comment by D. Scoggins — 11/9/2004 @ 6:27 am

  3. Dear Aunty Spam- this big orange box to the right
    covers part of your articles and it can’t be
    read. It would be nice to be able to read ALL your
    comments.
    Thanks

    Comment by D. Scoggins — 11/9/2004 @ 6:29 am

  4. i’m trying to subscribe to your newsletter the box link is dead please subsribe me

    THanks

    Comment by linda — 11/10/2004 @ 3:14 am

  5. Your right hand column covers most of the left. So I am unable to read this article or even be sure of what I am typing right now. Let’s go back to frames!

    I am using SlimBrowser v4.02 build 004.

    Comment by Allen Mulvey — 11/10/2004 @ 3:53 pm

  6. Well I thought it was just me and my antique IE 5.0 on Windows 98, but now I see other people have the same problem: this site is unreadable! Why does it have a horizontal scrollbar in this column with plenty of unused space on the right hand side of the screen?

    Comment by Roelof [The Netherlands] — 11/18/2004 @ 11:28 pm

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