Hacking: The Next Generation

Infiltrating the Underground

We’ve studied real phishing sites and kits and seen how phishers play tricks on each other. In this section, we will dive into the underground ecosystem of scams. You will see how phishers communicate and what they do with the identities they have stolen, and uncover scams beyond phishing.

Google ReZulT

We’ve looked at the server-side scripts, such as update.php and eBayISAPIBfes.php. These scripts are responsible for processing the information victims submit and sending the data to a hardcoded email address. In this section, we will use the information from these scripts to lead us into hidden locations on the Web where phishers and other scam artists communicate.

Here is a line from update.php that we looked at in Say Hello to Pedro!:

$message .= "------------------ReZulT--------------------------------\n";

The ReZulT string is interesting because it appears to be unique. When the victim submits to update.php, the email that is sent to the phisher includes this line.

Also note the following line in update.php:

$message .= "ATM PIN : ".$_POST['pin']."\n";

We decided to Google “ReZulT” in addition to the phrase “ATM PIN”. The initial idea was to uncover more phishing kits and additional locations where the update.php script may be present. Instead, the results from Google, illustrated in Figure 7-15, actually included real emails that were processed and sent to phishers. From ATM PINs to Social Security numbers, to online bank account usernames and passwords, ...