Concern has been raised with recent phishing scams in Australia that Google Maps could be used to locate victims
By: Captain Maverick
Feb 21, 2007 00:29 AM GMT
Two Australian banks were used as cover for phishing attacks in that country recently. At the crux of the phishing scam is a malicious code that could reveal the physical location of the affected IP addresses using Google Maps. Some bank account holders in Germany and the U.S. have also been targeted.
The phishing scheme was circulated as a false news report claiming the Australian prime minister had suffered a heart attack. It installs a Trojan and backdoor code to capture all user input as well as compromising a Web server to allow the hacker to hijack the victims' computer. The hacker is then provided with details on the number of infected machines in each country, while the Google Maps server is used to translate IP information to pinpoint the machines' physical location.
The banks targeted in Australia are Westpac and the Commonwealth Bank while Bank of America and Germany's Deutsche Bank were also attacked. Recipients of the e-mail are encouraged to click on a link to obtain the latest information on Howard's health; however, this link takes users to a Web page which downloads malicious code to their PC, and then displays the real '404 page not found' error page.
The best advice is to not click on any links in emails from senders who are not known to the recipients. Even those emails from known people but with unexpected links should be held as suspect.
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