CyberCriminals uses CNN Open Redirect vulnerability

Spammers uses open redirect vulnerability in CNN Web site.

Founder of E Hacking News Sabari Selvan has revealed a new campaign by sending out spam to Twitter. According Selvana, cybercriminals send out from your account unsolicited messages (spam), contain links to Internet sites that advertise dubious diet.

The most striking is the fact that spammers are actively using open redirect vulnerability on CNN and Yahoo. Thus, by following the link, the victim is redirected to the advertised site cybercriminals from the official website CNN and Yahoo.


Links like hxxx :/ / cgi.cnn.com / cgi-bin / redir? URL = hxxx :/ / tumblrhealth.me ", accompanied by enthusiastic comments allegedly being left by people who have tested the proposed diet.

For example:

"The diet porgram you told us about yesterday is soo good! Hxxx :/ / cgi.cnn.com / cgi-bin / redir? URL = hxxx :/ / tumblrhealth.me" One of the tweets posted from the spammers' twitter account reads.

Using an open redirect vulnerability on sites like CNN and Yahoo, cybercriminals are simultaneously solve several problems:

- High degree of confidence of potential victims;
- Filtration systems do not block the victims of access to the site because the request comes from a well-known legitimate site.

This is not the first time that CNN sites used in this way. In particular, in 2010, spammers have used an open redirect vulnerability on the site ads.cnn.com.