Australia's largest bank hit by fraud spam

Thanks to nathanintu for his post in BPN

POLICE are investigating two fraudulent spam attacks in the same day, as both the country's largest bank and domain name registrar were targeted by fraudsters.

Melbourne IT confirmed that deceptive emails luring its customers into paying a third party for domain name renewal had been referred to the Australian Federal Police, while the Commonwealth Bank was also targeted by emails sent to some of its Netbank users, which attempt to deceive them into entering their account and password details at a non-CBA website.

Melbourne IT spokesman Tom Valenta said the messages sent to domain name owners purporting to come from Melbourne IT were in fact sent via a UK-based ISP, and the Australian Federal Police had been alerted. The emails told recipients to go to a page which appeared to be on Melbourne IT's website to lodge the payment. However the URL given, which varies slightly between emails, but is similar to https://www.melbourneit.com.au:renew.cgi@80.47.222.225?XXXXX.COM, takes the user to another site which mimics Melbourne IT's. Melbourne IT has warned consumers and domain name resellers to ignore the emails, and check that when making payments to Melbourne IT, the web page displayed an SSL "padlock" icon in the corner of their browser.

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