Red-Gauge dot COM - Spoof or Backup Site?
Red-Gauge dot COM - Spoof or Backup Site?
RedGage member Rahul located a website that is an awful lot like our beloved RedGage.com - Red-Gauge.com:
CGmagia(12 hours ago) hi, i don't know mouch about internet but i found there is another website similar to redgage is it normal http://www.red-gauge.com/Eahauser , http://www.red-gauge.com/cgmagia
So I investigated this suspicious RG-clone website. After viewing the suspicious website, which while having a different URL - red-gauge instead of redgage - but displaying a website that looks just like our RedGage.com, it appears to be a backup site. Looking at a few pages I am familiar with on the "real" RedGage and noticing time-stamps, Frontpage announcements, member status messages, and other items I find that the site displays RedGage as it was just prior to the recent data center move, about 4 days ago (Sunday or Monday).
Rahul raises some questions about the validity of this other site and whether or not it could be a source of system errors since the RedGage update and moving the RG data-center earlier this week.
My observations of the Red-Gauge site are that if you look through the site it seems far too "deep" to be a spoof. This site is much more than just a front page copy - the intra-site linking is complete and viewing content follows the links and arrows, server calls and internal functions that do not require a member to be logged in are working. Every link and member I tried to access on Red-Gauge was found and that page displayed, with the www.red-gauge.com/membername or the piece of content I requested.
I think if this was an attempt to phish real RedGage members for their information - like logins and passwords, phone number, mail address, etc - the site would have an active and functional, though truly fake, login script and process in order to steal the information.
There could be some issues related to XSS errors and other problems being experienced by RG members after the data-center move if the two sites are trying to update the same databases.
I hope that RG will respond to my inquiry on this mirror site, put RG members at ease, and put this issue of the mystery site to bed.
P.S. If you do take a ride over there don't try logging in ... the login script is turned off!
The Real MrBill @ Real RedGage
