Google Debuts Phishing Alert Service

Google has added a feature to its service for network operators that will alert site owners when Google's automated scanners find a phishing URL on a particular site.

The phishing-URL alert service is an addition to the existing set of services that Google offers for site owners to help them identify malicious content on their sites. Late last month the company introduced another new service, Safe Browsing Alerts, which provide owners of large networks with alerts when malicious code is found on their sites.

The new service from Google is designed to help site owners find and remove Web pages hosted on their domains--perhaps in forgotten sub-domains or other out-of-the-way spots--that are being used as part of a phishing scam. Phishing gangs often will compromise obscure pages on sub-domains of large sites and use them as platforms for their scams. Security experts say that site owners often will not even know about the existence of some of these sub-domains until they turn up as part of a site audit or security assessment.

Google's notification service will send emails to site owners when the company's automated tools find a phishing page.

"By default, we send notification messages in a simple email message. However, we realize that some of you may want to process these notifications by a script, so we’ve added the ability to receive messages in XML format. Click on an AS in your list to modify preferences, such as enabling the XML notification feature," Google Nav Jagpal said in a blog post about the new phishing notification service.

Google also has a service that will send site owners a code sample when the company finds malicious content on the site.

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