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SCMP Reporter

Internet users have been warned about cheeky fraudsters using 'the oldest trick in the book' to hack into the worldwide network.

  The audacious hackers simply telephone Internet users, introduce themselves as 'from the Internet', and say there is a problem with the system and all the passwords need to be changed.

  To make this possible, the user is asked to divulge his or her current password.

  The trickster then accesses the user's Internet account, changes the password and uses the account for free.

  A South China Morning Post reporter tested the technique and had a 100 per cent success rate in getting Internet users picked at random to reveal their personal passwords.

  One even volunteered the password to his company's internal computer system.

  The manager of a textile company who uses the Internet to communicate with key customers said someone had tried to get the firm to divulge its password using this technique last Thursday.

  But the caller was connected to someone who did not know the password. When the employee offered to call back with the password, the 'Internet representative' refused to give a return number.

  John Sanders, of electronic data consultants The EDI Shop, said he had also received a call, and his attempt to trap the caller into divulging a return number also failed.

  'I think like most hackers he probably just wants to cause chaos,' Mr Sanders said. But he noted the fraudsters could easily run up a $5,000 bill before being discovered.

  Johnson Cheng Hoi, managing director of Worldlink, one of the territory's largest Internet service providers, said: 'It's the oldest trick in the book - but it works.'   If an Internet company needed to change a password, it could do so using its own security over-rides. It would never need to telephone a user, Mr Cheng said.

  A similar scam has been used in Britain by credit-card thieves to obtain personal identification numbers.



Internet users caught in web of deceit