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New breed of cybersquatters emerges
Wednesday, July 10 2002
by Matthew Clark


Though cybersquatting has slowed somewhat as a means to capitalise on strong
brands, Zerflow claims new types of cybersquatters have more malicious
intentions. 

Dublin-based Zerflow, an information security company, issued a warning on
Wednesday over a new breed of cybersquatters who use fake URLs to steal
passwords, personal details, credit card numbers or even money. "We are now
seeing more incidents of abuse from URL impersonator... and we are finding a real
criminal element out there," explained Tony Geraghty, head of business
development for Zerflow. 



He said that the company had encountered criminals that have registered new URLs
which have similar addresses to existing e-commerce sites, but perhaps a
different suffix. Using this fake URL, the impersonators insert meta tags or
deceptive content, that resembles meta tags and content in legitimate sites, so
that search engines will be sure to pick up the hoax addresses when users look
for specific sites. 



But often, the addresses are so similar that mistyped URLs could also lead to the
fake Web site. These phoney Web sites appear to be the real thing, Geraghty
explained, and will generally ask users for their password or personal details to
gain access to what the consumer believes to be the real site. "Once they give
their password, the site just sends out an error message and tells them to come
back later," he said. 





In the meantime, the attackers use the personal information to access on-line
accounts, or make on-line purchases on the real site using the stolen
information. Geraghty cited some examples of this practice uncovered by his own
company, including a bookmaker who was attacked in this manner and had funds
withdrawn by a bogus user. 





These phoney URLs themselves are generally purchased with fake information too,
making perpetrators all the more difficult to catch, he said. "Because people
are able secure e-business URLs so effectively this kind of thing is on the
rise."





Zerflow, which offers a number of information security services, sells a monthly
Web scanning service for customers to keep watch over other sites with similar
addresses. The company also actively monitors new registrations of addresses that
are suspiciously similar to existing e-commerce sites for an annual fee. 





With regard to more traditional cybersquatting incidents, where URLs are
registered for parody purposes or with the hope of being resold to other owners,
Geraghty admitted such practices seem to be on the decline. "That doesn't seem
to happen as much anymore and it's now easier to get those names back anyway,"
he commented. 





Still there have been a few notable cyber squatting incidents in recent months
including the registration of www.introducingmonday.co.uk, a site with a very
similar name to PricewaterhouseCoopers' www.introducingmonday.com. Other
contested addresses this year have been treasuryholdings.ie's objections to
treasuryholdings.com and Joseph Enterprises Inc, the maker of Chia Pets,
objecting to chia.info and chia.biz registrants.



Its worth noting however that in the treasuryholdings incident, the owner of
treasuryholdings.com, environmentalist Tim Kirby, said he not accused cyber
squatting because he never had any intention to sell the site to Treasury
Holdings. The address was used to protest a Treasury Holdings-backed waste
facility project. Meanwhile, in the Chia Pets case, Joseph Enterprises Inc.
accused NeoPets, owners of chia.info and chia.biz, of hijacking a popular US
brand. However both companies made popular retail items that were named Chia.