18 August 2008

Typo squatting targets presidential candidates

Eleanor Dallaway

The US presidential election was a target for typosquatters, said Oliver Friedrichs at the Black Hat conference in Las Vegas.

Typosquatting, also called URL hijacking, is a form of cybersquatting which relies on mistakes such as typographical errors made by internet users when inputting a website address into a web browser. Should a user accidentally enter an incorrect website address, they are led to an alternative website owned by a cybersquatter.

Friedrichs told Black Hat delegates that the US presidential election was a prime opportunity for cybersquatters to make money. “So many websites for the campaign are run in bad faith. Typosquatters can register many domain names for free and dump them after seven days. This way, they can see which domains are getting the most traffic and are thus most profitable”.

Typosquatter websites for presidential candidates who dropped out of the campaign months ago are still accepting donations, proving that these sites really do make money. “Typosquatting has grown to such a scale that real campaigns are actually posting paid adverts for their real campaign on the spoof sites”.  

Whilst some spoof sites are set up to be detrimental and detract from the candidate and their campaign, others are set up “to simply direct you to an opposing candidate’s real page”. JillaryClinton.com for example, may lead you directly to Obama’s genuine campaign website.

In July 2007, Symantec registered 124 domains, which would have been ideal for typosquatting, to protect the main candidates. “No-one contacted us to ask us why we’d bought these URLs. After six months of the domains sitting idle, we set up forward links to the real websites”.

Between January and March 2008, these sites had 21 000 hits.

“Spoof sites were setting their web pages up so that donations were being made directly into the opponent’s campaign pot”, explained Friedrich. So an innocent visit to JillaryClinton.com may have seen an unsuspecting user donating directly to Obama’s campaign despite intending to support Hillary Clinton. 

“Campaigns are not doing enough to protect themselves from this though” argued Friedrich. “In many cases, they’re sending supporters to different domains to donate, trying to keep it simple, but this can cause confusion and uncertainty”. It also makes it easier for typosquatters to operate.

“Election based spam is also a worry” commented Friedrich. “Spammers are not targeting the campaign, just using it to evoke interest” he concluded.

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