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How Do I Fight Russian Site Cloners?

Posted by kdawson on from the cloned-and-pwned dept.

An anonymous reader writes "I used to run a small web design service, the domain for which I allowed to expire after years of non-use. A few weeks ago, I noticed that my old site was back online at the old domain. The site-cloners are now using my old email addresses to gain access to old third-party web services accounts (invoicing tools, etc.) and are fraudulently billing my clients for years of services. I've contacted the Russian site host, PayPal, and the invoicing service. What more can I do? Can I fight back?"

11 of 208 comments (clear)

  1. contact your clients by Pinhedd · · Score: 5, Informative

    If you have a summary of your clients (and you should) you should send out a mass email and let them know what's going on

    1. Re:contact your clients by sopssa · · Score: 5, Funny

      The money has to get to these people somehow. Follow it, and you find the crook.

      Exactly, good advice!

      Like girlintraining states, you only need to hack to the Visa merchant account to know what bank account it belongs to, then hack the bank to know who is the owner of that account and get his bank statements to know what is being done with it. After you furiously raid the persons home you discover the old lady is a money mule and has wired the money overseas. Now you only need to take a flight to Kazakhstan and go talk with the local banks about it, just to find out that some alcoholic cashed it out for $10 and gave it to some man he doesn't remember.

      As always, great tip, girlintraining.

    2. Re:contact your clients by wvmarle · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I didn't immediately think "insider" but now you mention it... it makes total sense of a very unbelievable story.

      Oh well yet another story that doesn't pass a reality check, and in good kdawson fashion no supporting links or so. Here we go:

      The fraudsters copied the web site (that was presumably off-line for a long time). Trivial if it is all static pages, not trivial to impossible if it includes a lot of server-side scripting and you do not have access to the server directly. And quite unlikely that a web site is copied and kept archived by would-be fraudsters hoping that in the future the owner lets the domain expire so they can bring it back on-line? No. It just doesn't happen.

      Then they need to know which third-party services you used. And that you were so trusting that you use a third-party web service for invoicing in the first place.

      Then they know your clients (potentially through the third-party invoice service).

      Then they have your passwords (I may assume password protection).

      And how come your old accounts at those invoicing services are still accessible in the first place? From the fact that you let your domain expire after "years of non-use" I take it your business has closed years ago too. Third-party web services usually require payment, especially specialised stuff like invoicing. Not likely they keep that active without it being paid for.

      So Russian hackers? No. Insider job? That's where you should look first indeed. Start with former employees I'd say.

    3. Re:contact your clients by ottothecow · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I am not sure they would have to replicate the pages exactly. Just take whatever shows up on archive.org and and slap a current date on it.

      The cloners are not trying to recreate your business--they just have to make it look like the business still has an active website. Then they use the emails that they now control to get back into old accounts.

      As for knowing which third-party services were used, there may be some indication on the archived site or there may be something available with enough googling--maybe they find a former client from a "site design by..." tag and social engineer some answers out of them (they don't have to be an insider or client themselves...they just use your old email address and ask a former client). There can't be that many providers of some of these services that were active when the business was running and are still active now...just start using lost password forms.

      They might have to reinstate your old payments, but a few months of invoicing service is a drop in the bucket compared to what they could then invoice your clients for (and bigger corporate customers might not ask questions before cutting a check to a company already in the system).

      --
      Bottles.
  2. fight back by toxygen01 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    check the dns domain registrar of theirs and report domain abuse.
    that's what whois information is about too.

  3. Based on my understanding... by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Funny

    Of how Russian Free Enterprise works, I would suggest either hiring hitmen to brazenly gun-down whoever cloned your site, if it is a relatively small operation, or insinuate that the cloner is an enemy of the state, and have him jailed on trumped-up tax evasion charges, if it is a large operation.

    If neither of these options suits, I hear that Polonium is the new Earl Grey...

  4. ICANN by carp3_noct3m · · Score: 5, Informative

    Check out Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution. It is often overturned in court, and isn't always effective, but taking back control of the domain in whatever way possible is more than likely the only way you will fully recover from this. Otherwise you are simply on a damage mitigation mission.

    --
    "It's ok, I'm completely secure as long as my iron is off"
    1. Re:ICANN by ISurfTooMuch · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Excellent idea! If you file the claim, the scammers have to file a reply, or they lose by default. Since people like this are bottom feeders who move from one scam to another, I seriously doubt they'll want to expose themselves by filing a response. Like cockroaches exposed to a light, they'll scurry away.

  5. Re:Don't let valuable/vulnerable domains expire? by uglyduckling · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yes!! You've hit on the perfect answer. Hindsight and a time machine can solve any problem. Bravo!

  6. Re:Close your accounts! by Chrisq · · Score: 5, Funny

    Try to close your Slashdot account, for example.

    Bastard. now I've got to re-register.

  7. put this in bold by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    This is the fundamental thing to take away from this incident, and, while it may be obvious, it deserves stating plainly:

    Domain control / email address control is an authentication tool.

    We've brushed by the concept in prior conversations about validating new user sign-ups.

    Implications include, as in this scenario, human verification by looking at a web page of a familiar domain, human verification by email correspondence with a familiar email address, and password resetting when in control of an email address; SSL certificate-based identity (if the decrypted certificate can also be acquired), URL -referenced data validity (executables for download), and probably a number of other authentication/control mechanisms reliant on domain/address -- your ideas are solicited.

    DNS hijacking, then, should be a serious concern. DJB warned about cache poisoning via brute-force source port + transaction ID spoofing in 1999. A long time went by before the issue got enough publicity (in 2008) to force the major DNS software purveyors to clean up their acts. This guy needs to be taken seriously.