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Hacked Chinese Bank Server Phishes for US Banks 47

Posted by Roblimo from the why-do-people-fall-for-these-things? dept.
1sockchuck writes "A Chinese bank's servers are being used in phishing attacks against U.S. institutions, apparently the first time one bank's infrastructure has been used in attacks on other banks. A hacked server from China Construction Bank Shanghai Branch is hosting pages spoofing Chase and eBay. The scam is one of numerous sites using a social engineering hook promising a $20 reward for recipients who complete a survey about the bank's online services. It then asks for your account login and password - so it can deposit the $20 in the correct account, of course. Plus your Social Security number, mother's maiden name etc."
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Hacked Chinese Bank Server Phishes for US Banks More

Hacked Chinese Bank Server Phishes for US Banks

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  • Chinese hackers (Score:4, Funny)

    by PFI_Optix ( 936301 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @11:53AM (#14907883) Journal
    So this is how they make all that money.

    We need to bomb their Internet Center ASAP before they build another tank rush.

  • So that's why (Score:3, Interesting)

    by n9uxu8 ( 729360 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @11:55AM (#14907907) Homepage
    I have been hit with that Chase $20 email about 40 times this weekend. I have to wonder how stupid they think we really are....quite a bit apparently....

    Dave

    • Indeed. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Saeed al-Sahaf ( 665390 )
      The number of "computer literate" people on the Internet vs. "mom and pop" Interweb users who don't know any better, is actually very small. There is a good chance that a fair number in the small single digit percentages (or even smaller) respond to this type of stuff. Remember, it's like with penis pills, when you spam millions and millions, you only need a small percentage.
    • What do you mean "how stupid they think we really are"? It should be how stupid they _KNOW_ we are. You forget the average American, the target audience here, is a bunch of mouth breathing, knuckle-dragging morons. Really. Where do you think they get the people who work the crap shifts at McD's from? Think there are more of them then there are of you?

      Now, if you have net access, you are in the top 1/3 or so of the US intelligencia. Went to college? More like the top 10%. Active and aware of the political an
      • everyone posting here is WAY above average.

        I was with you up to this part. As the saying goes, "You must be new here" All crowds and most people think they are above average. /. is no different.

      • Wow...cynical. Hmmm...now I'm a mouth-breathin'(terrible sinus issues), non-knuckle-draggin' former employee of McD's with two college degrees. I'll have to apply your formula and see into which percentile I fit.

        In any case, my family is generally steel millers and Nascar watchers (I don't get it, but they are). I have to regularly delouse their machines of spyware and what not, but not one has been hit with a phishing scheme...few people...even knuckle-draggers believe the UK lottery has not only aut

      • So, I'm in the top third because I have net access? Never went to college, although I work at one and even teach a course. Have long been aware of the political and technical aspects of more than just issues like this one. So where does that put me? Oh yeah, I'm a /.er so that makes me instantly intelligent! w00t!

        Try this on for size: by your "formula" the faculty I work with should all be in the top 5-10%, yet with every new phishing scheme (and even some repeats of old ones) I have to answer the question

      • Re:So wrong! (Score:5, Interesting)

        by LurkerXXX ( 667952 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @01:55PM (#14909051)
        if you have net access, you are in the top 1/3 or so of the US intelligencia.

        Really? That's suprising seeing that nearly 75% of U.S. households have internet access [websiteoptimization.com]. (And that was back in 2004)

        Went to college? More like the top 10%

        So, going to college puts you in the top 10% eh? From 1990 to 2002, the number of high-school graduates entering college went from 60% to 64%. The percentage of Americans [usatoday.com] ages 25 to 29 with a bachelor's degree rose from 23% to 29%. Top 10% just by going to college? I don't think so.

        I expect you must be one who has fallen for the scams the way you pull numbers out of your ass to describe the American public.

      • Having 'Net access doesn't mean you're smart, it just means you have money and the desire to have it.

        I am in college now, and I can tell ya for sure that colleges are full of idiots, again, people with some money that want to be in college. Oh yeah, and they think they're smarter than everyone, and have networked with people that can help get them cushy well-paying jobs.

        People don't work the crap shifts at McDonald's because they're stupid; the stupidity is that enough people want to eat junk food at midni
    • I have been hit with that Chase $20 email about 40 times this weekend. I have to wonder how stupid they think we really are....quite a bit apparently....

      And I don't even have a Chase account!

  • Seems odd (Score:5, Interesting)

    by MrNougat ( 927651 ) <ckratsch@noSPAm.gmail.com> on Monday March 13, 2006 @11:56AM (#14907917)
    I find it odd, though not surprising really, that the Chinese gov't would have The Great Firewall of China in place, and have bank servers vulnerable to attack.

    And, the way TFA reads, the bank server (owned by the Chinese government) is currently hosting phishing pages. Can anyone confirm whether the affected server has been taken offline, or are they just letting it go on phishing?
    • The Great Firewall is meant to keep the Chinese people from freely accessing Internet resources outside of China, not to keep everyone else from accessing Internet resources in China.
  • If Dubya needed a reason to nukify China, he has one now.

    (Sorry. Couldn't resist it.)

  • China Construction (Score:4, Informative)

    by Stargoat ( 658863 ) <stargoat@gmail.com> on Monday March 13, 2006 @12:14PM (#14908093) Journal
    China Construction is a huge bank. [wikipedia.org] It's the Chinese eqivilent of Chase or something similar in size. Not the People's Bank of China (Chinese Central Bank) but still huge. I'm amazed that their security is so lax. That level of incompetence is just amazing.
    • When you allow only legal information, most people will not even know what is possible aside of what is permitted.

      And if those people are responsible for security... think Demolition Man, just on an IT-scale.
    • I'm amazed that their security is so lax. That level of incompetence is just amazing.

      communist countries tend to be like that. though the problem is of course not exclusive to them, for instance south korea is a giant cesspool of pwned boxen and incompetent admins.

      still, for a state bank to be used for phishing has got to be a little embarassing. of course it's just a plot by evil capitalist americans to make china look bad.

  • Another reason (Score:3, Interesting)

    by $ASANY ( 705279 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @12:33PM (#14908267) Homepage
    ...to netblock APNIC space at your firewall. I'm not happy I need to do it, and I wish it wasn't necessary. This continuing saga is only going to accelerate the growing trend to have the great wall not being an internal firewall, but an external one built over time by individual admins tired of these problems.

    I have to wonder whether there is a deliberate strategy by the chinese government to encourage the world to cut off access to western sites. Allow every kind of malware, be entirely unresponsive to abuse requests, and wait for the west to defensively wall China off so the chinese government won't have to do it themselves. Pretty stupid strategy long-term, though, so I can't believe it's deliberate.
    • I do my best to cut off all Chinese traffic because of this reason. Every block I blackhole drops my incoming spam by a significant amount. Do you happen to have a list of all chinese IP blocks? Right now, I just do it on an ad hoc basis: I get some crap, check to source, and if it's from China, I block the whole block of IP's. It would be much faster if I had some kind of definitive list, then I could just do it all at once. (They do have a shitload of IP addresses)

      • Re:Another reason (Score:4, Informative)

        by $ASANY ( 705279 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @02:14PM (#14909224) Homepage
        This is from the IP allocation documentation provided on IANA's website. It is an extremely blunt instrument to employ:

        058/8 Apr 04 APNIC
        059/8 Apr 04 APNIC
        060/8 Apr 03 APNIC
        061/8 Apr 97 APNIC
        121/8 Jan 06 APNIC
        122/8 Jan 06 APNIC
        123/8 Jan 06 APNIC
        124/8 Jan 05 APNIC
        125/8 Jan 05 APNIC
        126/8 Jan 05 APNIC
        202/8 May 93 APNIC
        203/8 May 93 APNIC
        210/8 Jun 96 APNIC
        211/8 Jun 96 APNIC
        218/8 Dec 00 APNIC
        219/8 Sep 01 APNIC
        220/8 Dec 01 APNIC
        221/8 Jul 02 APNIC
        222/8 Feb 03 APNIC

        There are other ranges where APNIC is interspersed with other stuff, but this list gets you all the /8 space which can be blocked conveniently.

        Bill's Blacklist [scconsult.com] is more extensive and gets into the APNIC space that's wedged within other /8 netblocks, and he also identifies other problem children. His list is probably too agressive for your tastes if you're running a public website, though.

        • That's perfect, thanks. That's exactly what I need. Even if I don't get all of them, it'll still make a huge difference. And you're right... I'd rather get 90% of Chinese traffic stopped than get 100% of Chinese, and some IP's from other countries.

          • This address space is APNIC, not just China. It includes Taiwan, Korea and plenty of other countries, but not Australia. If you're looking for just the China netspace, I don't know where to find that info. Even if you found it, it would probably consist of a lot of non-contiguous netblocks which whould be difficult to manage.

            Think hard before you use such an imprecise hammer like this.

            • Australia (and New Zealand) both get IP allocations from APNIC. They don't split up the /8s by country, ISPs and organisations just get handed out ranges from within those /8s. Australia and NZ have lots of customers in those ranges :(
              • Damn, thanks for the head's up. But to the parent poster, yes, I DO want to use a hammer this big. We're a small company, so I can decide that we're simply not doing business or communicating with China for now. We won't ship to China, and we don't buy anything directly from China, so the *only* traffic that we see from China is lots and lots of spam, and worm attempts.
            • Nope, it includes Australia too.
  • is the great (fire)wall of China?

  • Bank network security (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RingDev ( 879105 ) on Monday March 13, 2006 @01:19PM (#14908727) Homepage Journal
    I worked for a non-consumer bank as a consultant a few years back, and I was rather concerned with what I saw there.

    The IS Coordination was rabidly anti-Microsoft. The network was mostly windows 98/NT machines on Banyon Vines 3.0 (this was in 2001, right about the time Novel released Banyon 6 I believe) with a handful of Unix based servers.

    To prevent possible security breaches, none of the machines had access to the internet except for a few special machines. Those machiens where not suppose to have access to the internet and the intranet at the same time. What actually happened was that those employees with "one or the other" access figured out they could just leave both cables plugged in and no one would know.

    Towards the end of my contract, relations where breaking down. The IS Coordination was accusing me of purposely introducing bugs to inflate my hours, and I was accusing her of blatant incompetence. The bug that she had been accusing me of creating happened only on the normal staff's PC. My laptop, and her brand new PC worked fine. Turns out that not only were they using an out dated version of Vines (v3 -> v6) they had also not patched it on any of the worker machines (They were on v3.0, and at that time v3 was patched to v3.3). Her machine and my laptop had been fully patched. The problem wound up being one of the dated libraries included in Vines 3.0.

    Unregulated internet access + outdated and compromised network system + a high volume of multi-million dollar transactions = receipt for disaster.

    -Rick
  • With the potential for the Chinese (or whoever's puppeting that server) to gain a lot of money from dumb people this way..

    What is the limit before the government does something about it? I mean we could do it any number of ways. Covertly..overtly..fast..slow..with a side of fries..whatever you want.

    Whats it going to take to make us drop a server like an armed drunk charging an officer?

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