HACKER Q&A
📣 throwawaykwt01

Namecheap is refusing to halt a novel phishing scam. Please Help


There is a relatively clever phishing scam that's active right now where the site only shows the phishing scam when it's visited by a smart phone. Visiting it from a regular desktop browser redirects to some other service. (can still be seen using dev tools)

A cursory investigation showed that Namecheap is providing both registrar and hosting services for this phishing site. I reported the offending site to namecheap but they have refused to act, likely because they haven't been able to trigger the scam.

What should I do? How do I get the attention of the security team at namecheap?

Since this is a throwaway account, I'm afraid I might trigger some spam protection if I share this url in the OP. I'll share it in the comments once this post gets some engagement.

IF YOU CAN HELP PLEASE DO. I only managed to stop one of my family members from falling victem to this scam by accident. I'm sure many have not been as lucky.

Thank you.


  👤 LinuxBender Accepted Answer ✓
Get the IP of the server the phishing site is hosted on. Look up who owns it. [1] Try to determine if they are resellers or the primary owner of the address space. Give any logs or URL's to the hosting provider. Make sure they understand that the site changes based on user-agent or network so they will have to test from a mobile device.

[1] - https://bgp.he.net/


👤 throwawaykwt01
Here is the url lightly obfuscated if anyone is interested in investigating further: https:// kuwaitpostparcel [DOT] express / KW343

You can trigger the website by using "responsive mode" in dev tools and selecting a common android device.

Please note that this site /is/ malicious. Investigate at your own risk.


👤 davidandgoliath
Call them out on Twitter, they'll reply. Be aware much of their team is in the Ukraine, so expect some potentially belated replies.