Viagra scam on the rise

Numerous UK universities have been unknowingly helping criminals to sell fake Viagra over the internet.


A security firm has discovered that an increasing number of organisations using the .ac.uk domain are unknowingly pushing customers to websites offering fake erectile dysfunction pills.

Amichai Shulman, of the security company Imperva, which was responsible for uncovering the scam, emphasised how the criminals exploited software to piggyback on the computing resources of various colleges and universities. He also noted how the spammers exploited vulnerabilities in widely used technology called PHP.
The injected PHP codes included search terms such as Viagra and Cialis. Therefore, when a person searched for drugs such as these online, the universities and colleges’ web addresses would pop up in the top results. Anyone who clicked on these links would then be re-directed to a fake pharmacy selling counterfeit pills.

According to a BBC report, Ravensbourne College of Design and Communication in Kent was one school whose website became victim to the scam.
A spokesperson for the college said, “We immediately took action to temporarily close down and remove the compromised area while we resolved the issue.

Mr. Shulman of Imperva said that the rate such sites were being put up and taken down made it hard to get an exact figure of how many sites had been hit. However, he estimated that “thousands” of sites had been caught out by the drug spammers.