Spoof site demonstrates ease of forgery
It's not an April Fools' prank, just a stupid prank. But we all have lessons to learn from the way that a website has made a convincing presentation of its fiction that Bill Gates has been murdered.
It's no longer April Fools' Day but that doesn't mean the idiocy is at an end. The website cgrom.com has captured the layout of CNN.Com, with all its links intact, and inserted a story about Bill Gates. The look and feel of the site is that of a legitimate CNN page - because it is.
Only the story, which is a well written hoax about the supposed murder of Gates in the style of a side-swipe at the reports of themurder of Kennedy, is made up.
Aside from the disturbance to markets that such a report might create, especially at a time when they are already suffering from major jitters, the item demonstrates just how easy it is for anyone to fall foul of someone wanting to fake their identity.
The mail CGROM page has what it says is a news headline and pretends to link to CNN. Even the name of the page starts with CNN so that it looks realistic at first glance at the line appearing in the status bar of the browser.
CGROM.Com is a hacker site - set up to reveal how hackers abuse systems. It's actually pretty low level stuff and the main site is very amateur in its presentation. However, the CNN page is anything but amateur - it shows that it is child's play for anyone with rudimentary knowledge of html to create a page that looks just like the real thing.
It is surprising how few know how easy this is. The next time you look at a website for verification of identity, make sure you are where you think you are.
Download PDF version of this page