The Industrial and Commercial Bank of China offers online banking for customers through its website. The image at left is not that website, however. The ICBC homepage was copied in its entirety from icbc.com.cn and put up at cnicbc.com.cn (since taken down) with a modified central graphic, which reads “Register to win online cash”. Visitors, most of whom found the site through BBS forum posts, were requested to give their online account number and password to register for the drawing.
Though this is not the first time such a phishing scheme has been used – a search on Baidu of Chinese news stories about fake ICBC sites brings up a series of similar examples – it is part of a fairly recent trend. Before the second half of 2004, attacks against Chinese account holders were comparatively few, and attracted significant media attention only in December.
Links and Sources:
Photo and information from The Beijing News; article is here. Brief history of phishing in China from Xi’an Evening News here, both links in Chinese.