.gov website plays host to UK banking phish collection

The Gobernacion Departmento Central (or “Central Department”) is a curious thing. A Department is (according to Wikipedia) an

“administrative political subdivision of a country established by the cognizant (usually legislative) government authority holding sovereign power for the territory.

Departments are roughly equivalent to a state, province or county”.

Now that’s out of the way, we can take a look at something rather nasty on the Central Department .gov portal which can be found at central(dot)gov(dot)py.

Here’s what the site looks like to the regular vistor:

Click to Enlarge

However, digging around the site reveals something a little disturbing:



No less than fourteen different banking / financial services phishes including Barclays, Abbey, Northern Rock, Halifax and Lloyds TSB. Clearly, someone is desperate to get their hands on as many UK banking credentials as possible. These phishes are all online at the moment although some appear to be flagged in browsers such as Firefox. We’ve contacted the hosts and hopefully all of the above will be offline shortly.

Christopher Boyd