Owned: National Hi-Tech Crime Unit website

Davey Winder
Wednesday, 03 September 2008 17:07

Your IT - Home IT

At the very least it shows a total misunderstanding of the basics of IT security, although that in itself should come as no surprise as we are talking about the 'we lost the data on 25 million child benefit claimants' UK Government here.

The current owner of the domain has done absolutely nothing illegal in purchasing the vacant property. However, it is fair to say that Uwe Matt does now pwn the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit website.

While the home page has a generic lump of body text rambling on about high tech crime, the real purpose of this would seem to be pushing it up the Google rankings. The only other page of content seems to confirm this.

Behind the waffle relating a strange tale of staying at some hotel where the owner said isn't there a lot of crime online, are the links to a couple of sites where you can book a holiday in Germany.

However, there is nothing to stop him from selling the domain at any time, and no guarantee that the new owner will not have something more malicious than marketing in mind.

"In the worst possible scenario, fraudsters could in future use the site to pretend to be the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit and try and harvest confidential information from computer crime victims," continued Cluley.  "This situation may never arise, but the message is clear - all organisations must take proper care of their website domains, especially if they are widely linked to from other sites."

Sophos has published a video exploring the rise and fall of the NHTCU website.