Ask HN: Tracking down fake Airbnb owner

8 points by asdojasdosadsa 6 years ago | 10 comments

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?

gus_massa 6 years ago |

The title is slightly confusing. Note that it is a ((fake Airbnb) owner), not a (fake (Airbnb owner)).

BoorishBears 6 years ago | |

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).

nwsm 6 years ago |

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)

dfyr 6 years ago |

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...

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

sonicxxg 6 years ago |

Is "Not so technical" euphemism for naive? This sucks, but also seems like a low effort scam.

asdojasdosadsa 6 years ago | |

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

philpem 6 years ago |

This is gonna sound a bit granny-suck-eggs... but I hope your friend reported it to the police?

asdojasdosadsa 6 years ago | |

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

gameofcode 6 years ago | | |

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.