FBI Warns of Fake Govt Sites, ISIS Defacements

[InfoSec News <alerts () infosecnews org>]

http://krebsonsecurity.com/2015/04/fbi-warns-of-fake-govt-sites-isis-defacements/

By Brian Krebs
Krebs on Security
April 7, 2015

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is warning that individuals 
sympathetic to the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Shams (ISIS) are 
mass-defacing Websites using known vulnerabilities in WordPress. The FBI 
also issued an alert advising that criminals are hosting fraudulent 
government Web sites in a bid to collect personal and financial 
information from unwitting Web searchers.

According to the FBI, ISIS sympathizers are targeting WordPress Web sites 
and the communication platforms of news organizations, commercial 
entities, religious institutions, federal/state/local governments, foreign 
governments, and a variety of other domestic and international sites. The 
agency said the attackers are mainly exploiting known flaws in WordPress 
plug-ins for which security updates are already available.

The public service announcement (PSA) coincides with a less public alert 
that the FBI released to its InfraGard members, a partnership between the 
FBI and private industry partners. That alert noted that several extremist 
hacking groups indicated they would participate in an operation dubbed 
#OpIsrael, which will target Israeli and Jewish Web sites to coincide with 
Holocaust Remembrance Day (Apr .15-16).

“The FBI assesses members of at least two extremist hacking groups are 
currently recruiting participants for the second anniversary of the 
operation, which started on 7 April 2013, and coincides with Holocaust 
Remembrance Day,” the InfraGard alert notes. “These groups, typically 
located in the Middle East and North Africa, routinely conduct 
pro-extremist, anti-Israeli, and anti-Western cyber operations.”

[...]

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