Typical comments:
“Wow I’ve actually never seen that screen before. That’s hilarious.”
“As it should. Chrome should give it the red screen of death”
“It’s an interesting development, which made me wonder: Are people reporting phishing to Cloudflare just to mess with Mr. Mullenweg or is there something the site does that can actually be considered phishing?
Cloudflare’s report form has another type of abuse to select, which, in this case, is as obvious as the sun on the sunniest day: Trademark infringement. Why are people reporting phishing?”
One commenter noted the website was displaying a “403 Forbidden” error message if a site visitor ignored the warning and clicked through to the site. A 403 server response means that the server acknowledges the browser request but is denying access to the website.
Screenshot Of Blocked Website
Typosquatting Domain Name Registered
Typosquatting is when someone registers a domain name that is similar to a brand name and that users may type to visit. In this case, someone registered the domain name WPEngineTracker.com to take advantage of the fact that Automattic had registered the domain name WordPressEngineTracker.com but was calling it WP Engine Tracker. When people try to reach the Automattic site by typing in the name of the site as the domain they then arrive at the typosquat domain.
Screenshot of Typosquat Domain
The above domain name was only registered a few days ago on November 7th. The Internet being what it is, it was inevitable that someone would register the typosquat domain name variant.
WordPressEngineTracker.com Is Back Online
After a few hours of downtime Cloudflare removed the phishing block and the Automattic WordPress Engine Tracker website was restored.
Featured Image by Shutterstock/santypan