“Phishers hit hosting providers” is shorthand for a more specific technique: attackers broke into shared web servers, then distributed phishing pages across many domains hosted on those servers. In the first half of 2014, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) identified 215 such mass break-ins that produced 24,662 phishing attacks—about 20% of the phishing attacks in its recorded global dataset.
What APWG meant by “shared virtual server hacking”
APWG’s Global Phishing Survey: 1H2014, dated 24 September 2014, calls the pattern “Shared Virtual Server Hacking.” A shared server hosts multiple websites or domains. Rather than compromise each website separately, an attacker compromises the server and uses that access to place phishing content where multiple hosted hostnames will display it.
This wording describes abuse of hosting infrastructure. It does not mean that every hosting company was knowingly involved, that the provider itself was always the direct victim, or that every affected site was separately penetrated.
How one server could create many phishing sites
Configuration-based distribution
APWG says an attacker could upload one copy of phishing content and alter the server configuration so that the content appeared under each hostname served by the machine. A single uploaded page could therefore be reachable at many different domain names.
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Automated exploitation
The report also describes automation exploiting a known server flaw as a possible route. Once the attacker gained the necessary access, scripts could place or activate phishing content across the sites handled by the server.
Why the scale was attractive
The advantage was multiplication: one successful server compromise could affect hundreds of websites, depending on the server’s configuration. The attacker avoided repeating a separate intrusion for every domain while gaining a large set of plausible-looking web addresses for credential theft.
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What the APWG numbers show
| APWG period | Mass break-ins of shared virtual servers | Resulting phishing attacks | Share of APWG-recorded attacks |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2H2013 | 178 | 20,911 | About 18% |
| 1H2014 | 215 | 24,662 | About 20% |
APWG reported the comparison period, the second half of 2013, as 178 mass break-ins and 20,911 resulting attacks, representing about 18% of the attacks it recorded. For the first half of 2014, its report states: “In 1H2014, we identified 215 mass break-ins of this type, resulting in 24,662 phishing attacks.” The percentages use APWG’s recorded dataset for each reporting period, not a census of every phishing incident worldwide.
What the finding means for website owners
- A clean individual site did not guarantee isolation. A neighboring account or a vulnerable shared server could expose multiple domains through the same underlying infrastructure.
- Phishing pages could appear under legitimate-looking hostnames. The attacker’s scale came from making the same content resolve across domains already served by the machine.
- Incident scope had to include the server and its other hosted sites. Removing one visible page would not necessarily eliminate the configuration change or automated mechanism that created the other copies.
What this report does—and does not—establish today
The figures are historical results for January through June 2014. They show that shared-server compromises were a substantial part of APWG’s recorded phishing activity at that time, rising from about 18% in 2H2013 to about 20% in 1H2014. They do not establish the current prevalence of the technique. A present-day rate would require a newer, comparable measurement.
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SecurityWeek’s 29 September 2014 coverage reproduced the principal APWG figures, but it is contemporaneous context rather than a current threat assessment.
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