back to article UK uni warns students of phishers trying to nick their tuition fees

Foreign students looking to experience the stochastic joys of a year at Newcastle University in England are being warned that phishers are after their cash – using an unusually well-crafted attack. The raiders set up a very realistic-looking fake website proclaiming itself to be Newcastle International University, complete …

  1. Mark 85

    Interestingly enough.. the site is still up and running. I'm surprised that they haven't been shutdown yet. I guess these things take some time to kill off.

    1. taxman

      Perhaps GoDaddy are having problems contacting the site admin Walid Sayed

    2. g00se
      Headmaster

      Verbicide

      I'm surprised that they haven't been shutdown yet.

      You mean "shut down". You didn't login properly today did you?

  2. Len Goddard

    Am I missing something?

    Stochasitc is usually a description of a type of (random) process or sequence. Did the author here mean scholastic or was he inferring that all pleasures in Newcastle are random?

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Am I missing something?

      Yeah, aren't spillchuckers wonderful. Even someone whose trade is words switches their brain off and lets the computer do it for them.

    2. g00se
      Headmaster

      Re: Am I missing something?

      or was he inferring that all pleasures in Newcastle are random?

      I'm guessing you mean "implying"

    3. Captain Badmouth
      Headmaster

      Re: Am I missing something?

      Did you mean implying or inferring?

      Beaten by goose.

  3. Winkypop Silver badge

    Ay Pet

    Dance ti' thy daddy, sing ti' thy mammy,

    Dance ti' thy daddy, ti' thy mammy sing;

    Thou shall hev a fishy on a little dishy,

    Thou shall hev a salmon when the boat comes in.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Ay Pet

      > ... Thou shall hev a salmon when the boat comes in.

      Go, Daddyo, Go.

  4. Gordon Pryra

    it's thought the website was spammed out via email to these foreign students

    Why is not made of the fact that somehow these people got a list of these foreign students details?

    Or have I read this wrong?

    1. Alister

      Re: it's thought the website was spammed out via email to these foreign students

      Or have I read this wrong?

      I don't think it's a directly targeted attack on individuals, just a phishing email which only foreign students would be likely to respond to.

  5. jde96

    Happened to us...

    Our company has recently been the subject of a similar attack, setting up a fake website with jobs on it, posting job adverts, and inviting people to a 6 week training course with fees of about $2,500, which they promise to pay back on completion. We're UK based, and the fraud made it look like we were branching out into the US and taking people on.

    Cue lots of worried Americans emailing and calling us wondering whether it was legit. They'd been sent contracts of employment and all sorts and all seemed to be at different stages through the fraud, from seeing the initial advert, to booking flights / hotels to go to the non-existent course.

    We contacted Action Fraud, who appeared to do nothing at all, and we got the website shut down by messaging a very nice Ukrainian DNS provider who were very helpful, but they popped back a week later with the same website, and slightly altered DNS name (they put a hyphen in it). That's now shut down too, and it's been quite for a week or 2 now.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Facepalm

    Registrant Contact Information

    newcastleinternationaluniversity.com ..

    Registrant Contact Information: Name Walid Sayed, Organization Newcastle International University

    Registrar:GODADDY.COM, LLC Updated Date: 08-jul-2017, Creation Date: 05-jul-2017, Expiration Date: 05-jul-2018

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