'Meta-phish' uses attached form to evade web filters

Posted by   Virus Bulletin on   Oct 21, 2011

Landing page contains clear warning.

A phishing email targeting Austrian credit card users evades web filters by using an attached HTML form, but thankfully the landing page on the real website has a clear warning.

The email, written in far from fluent German, claims to be sent from PayLife, Austria's largest facilitator of financial transactions. It warns the user their credit card has been blocked, ironically because of 'various phishing attempts', and urges them to fill in the form attached to the email to re-activate their card.

The use of an HTML document attached to a spam message, rather than a link to a (fake) website, is not a new technique; spammers use it to avoid web filters. It puts all the burden the spam filter and thus we found it slightly worrying that more than half of the filters participating in the VBSpam tests missed this email.

The form submits a HTTP POST request to a PHP file on the domain egurman dot com dot ua. This appears to be a legitimate if inactive Ukrainian website, which has likely been hacked. The PHP document no doubt sends the credit card information to the phishers before seamlessly redirecting the user to the real PayLife website.

However, we were pleased to notice that PayLife has put a clear message on the landing page: it warns the user that if they just filled in a form, they have been phished and should contact PayLife by phone immediately.

We have notified the owner of the Ukrainian domain.



Posted on 21 October 2011 by Virus Bulletin
twitter.png
fb.png
linkedin.png
hackernews.png
reddit.png

 

Latest posts:

VBSpam tests to be executed under the AMTSO framework

VB is excited to announce that, starting from the Q3 test, all VBSpam tests of email security products will be executed under the AMTSO framework.

In memoriam: Prof. Ross Anderson

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of Professor Ross Anderson a few days ago.

In memoriam: Dr Alan Solomon

We were very sorry to learn of the passing of industry pioneer Dr Alan Solomon earlier this week.

New paper: Nexus Android banking botnet – compromising C&C panels and dissecting mobile AppInjects

In a new paper, researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Bansal provide details of a security vulnerability in the Nexus Android botnet C&C panel that was exploited in order to gather threat intelligence, and present a model of mobile AppInjects.

New paper: Collector-stealer: a Russian origin credential and information extractor

In a new paper, F5 researchers Aditya K Sood and Rohit Chaturvedi present a 360 analysis of Collector-stealer, a Russian-origin credential and information extractor.

We have placed cookies on your device in order to improve the functionality of this site, as outlined in our cookies policy. However, you may delete and block all cookies from this site and your use of the site will be unaffected. By continuing to browse this site, you are agreeing to Virus Bulletin's use of data as outlined in our privacy policy.