Case Study: Web Spoofing

Case Study: Web Spoofing
Web spoofing is a kind of electronic con game in which the attacker
creates a convincing but false copy of the entire World Wide Web. The
false Web looks just like the real one: it has all the same pages and links.
However, the attacker controls the false Web, so that all network traffic
between the victim’s browser and the Web goes through the attacker.
The techniques used include:
• Man-in-the-middle attack.
• URL rewriting.
• Form spoofing.
• JavaScript camouflaging.
Web Spoofing Methodology
The methodology for creating and implementing a false web site for the
purpose of web spoofing, now follows.
1. The first step is to lure the victim into the false Web by:
• Putting a link to the false Web on popular page.
• Sending a link in a Web-enabled mail.
• Tricking a search engine into indexing part of the false Web.
2. The false Web is created by rewriting all URLs on a web page so that
they point to the attacker’s server rather than to some real server.
For example: http://home.netscape.com
becomes
http://www.attacker.org/http://home.netscape.com.
3. The victim requests the web page through their web browser, not
realizing the URL is spoofed.
4. The attacker’s server then requests pages from the real server.
5. The real server provides the page to the attacker’s server.