Study uncovers problem of high-profile sites open to phishing

Monday, 14 Jan 2008. Categories: USA

US research team SiteTruth has uncovered a number of high-profile websites which are vulnerable to phishing scams.

Previous reports from the Register have uncovered a number of sites, including Barclays Bank’s, which are vulnerable to a scam whereby phishers hijack what appears to be a legitimate URL.

However, in fact the link redirects users to a fraudulent site and facilitates the passage of phishing attacks through spam filters.

Now SiteTruth's research has given some indication of the size of the practice, after examining the 10,000 sites listed in PhishTank - a site which collates, details and seeks to verify phishing scams - with the 1.7 million sites in the Open Directory Project.

The team found that 171 domains were vulnerable to phishing scams and that many of these were high-profile sites which house URL links that could be hijacked.

In recent months SiteTruth has named sites including Google Maps and the web presences of AOL, Microsoft Live, the BBC, Yahoo!, and UK bank Alliance and Leicester as vulnerable to opportunistic phishing tricks.

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Study uncovers problem of high-profile sites open to phishing

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