14 DAY TRIAL // A phishing site that probably made off with the digital assets of many was hacked by a white hat hacker with the purpose of educating those who fell into the trap of the cybercriminals.
According to GFI Labs, it all starts with a classic spam email that alerts users of a fake account problem.
"You have exceeded the storage limit on your mailbox.You will not be able to send or receive new mail until you upgrade your email. Click the below link and fill the form to upgrade your account,” reads the phony message.
When the link from the alert was clicked, the internaut was faced with a simple form that required him to fill in sensitive details such as username, password and email address.
Someone with decent computer programming knowledge noticed the scam and decided to teach the bad guys a lesson by replacing the original form with something that warns about the dangers from the online world.
"There is no such thing as a central email service update. A stupid criminal created this to steal your email account. I have modified it to educate you about online crime. He does not like that but that is too damn bad. You can submit this form to see a helpful video about phishing. Stop letting stupid criminals like this one hijack your account. Have a great day," could be seen on the former phishing page.
Now, the submit button, instead of sending credentials to the hackers, it points the user to an online article called “Stop phishing”.
Finally someone decided to give another lesson to the ones out to get our possessions. Because, unfortunately, this doesn't happen very often you need to stay alert for these types of expeditions deployed by cybercrminials.
Never click on suspicious links, use a strong password to secure your accounts and make sure your anti-virus is up and running.