Phishing Scam Targets Your cPanel

Posted on 11. Dec, 2009 by Craig in Online Scams

A recent report filed by The Register claims that a new phishing scam was discovered and the webmasters of legitimate websites are being targeted by fakes pretending to be their hosting provider, asking for updated login info. The sham includes some of the most widely used hosting companies like Go Daddy, Hostgator and Yahoo! to name a few.

Over 90 companies have been breached with customers all receiving a similar email request, “due to maintenance work, please take a few minutes to confirm your FTP details.” Clicking on a link in the e-mail directs users to a page that mimics the look of their hosting control panel, or cPanel. When the customer logs in, that information is then sent to the phishing culprits.

The goal is to acquire user names and passwords and considering it’s a direct link to hundreds of individual servers, you can imagine what kind of trouble these evil S.O.B.s can create having that information. Phishers are renown for creating spam, setting up bots to distribute their spam and of course sending around malware.

Whats worse is, if your site is breached by Phishing, it’ll likely land on a blacklist which is usually very difficult to be removed from. These black lists are used by Google and Firefox and other tools to warn users of unsafe websites.

If you suspect your server/site has been Phished or you’ve received a phishing email, webmasters should notify their web hosting company immediately and they should be able to provide assistance and details as to how to proceed.