Ask HN: Tracking down fake Airbnb owner
Case: Not so technical colleague got scammed for 2 months rent. What can he do?
Steps: 1. He found apartment listing on immobiliare.it
2. Some emails were exchanged
3. He receives the link to the _real_ airbnb listing
4. He cant find it there, and the scammer sends the phishing page[1] (from @expertdesigner.eu)
5. Soon after he receives another email saying that the database is down from @airbnb.sa.com and he should meanwhile move the money using transferwise.com
6. Payment done
7. Scammer replies: Payment received
The login page was quite well made, and I think most of non technical people might get fooled
[1] The URL: https://airbnb.com-itinerary.app/rooms/762837232/files/login.php?id=572465&locale=en&sale=203&
Thoughts? The title is slightly confusing. Note that it is a ((fake Airbnb) owner), not a (fake (Airbnb owner)). Literally makes no difference. Both convey the same problem. In fact if anything, the story is about a (fake) AirBnb owner. The AirBnB was real, the “owner” was fake. Both are accurate unless you somehow imagined this would be a story about a fake founder of AirBnB (in which case I’d say the confusion is more of a personal problem). I don't have any advice but I hope they are able to recover their money. Shitty people like that are why some US states like Massachusetts now require all renters to find apartments through a registered broker. Sounds nice and safe but it ended up in me paying 4 months rent to get a new apartment. (2 months rent + security deposit + broker fee which was over a month's rent) There's more to it, more php machinery, but in short: Basic Info - username at home dir: comitin1
- LiteSpeed server
- SERVER_ADMIN=webmaster@airbnb.com-itinerary.app
- English not first language - Sends over location, victim ip-port pair, protocol, client, TLS encryption suite Client (Victim): From main.html: POST /transaction.php?id=1 --> transaction.html POST /transaction-process.php --> attacker no longer cares...empty response body Admin https://airbnb.com-itinerary.app/rooms/762837232/files/manag... Login with POST /index.php with username and password There is a whole interface for easy management of properties, with its own UI!
It does proper client and server-side validation of inputs, uses a set of images
of houses and hosters. POST /process-data.php POST /send-discount.php for a particular property id POST /edit-discount-process.php Is "Not so technical" euphemism for naive? This sucks, but also seems like a low effort scam. Well, I have seen quite many phishing pages and scams, and this was not that low effort scam - probably setting up all the domains and phishing pages etc has taken a bit of work and technical skills This is gonna sound a bit granny-suck-eggs... but I hope your friend reported it to the police? Yes, reported to : - The police - https://reportphishing.net/airbnb/ - Airbnb report on the listing page - but now to think about it, we can't be sure the listing itself is connected to the scam. The host of the listing is a superhost (whatever that means) Also the police said, there's not much they can do Report to TransferWise as well, I've never used them but have heard their support is decent - that's not to say they'll be able to help you but it's worth doing for sure. Thanks, I forwarded this