BYU’s new website theme fosters identity theft

On February 15th, BYU will launch a new look and feel for its various websites including the BYU homepage, Route Y, and department and college sites.  The administrators for BYU’s webpages have nicknamed this new look and feel Collage.  The Collage theme sports new colors and new methods for user interaction, but will increase a hacker’s ability to steal student’s identities.

An essential component to Collage is a login form on the top of every page.  Students can type their username and password into the form to be shown a custom set of Internet links.  Webpage administrators expect that students will frequently enter their password to gain access to their preferred links.  Students will then be trained to frequently type their password on top of any page with the Collage theme.

Within a matter of minutes, anyone with a technical background can set up a page using the Collage theme.  They can make it look like a genuine and legitimate BYU site.  In particular, hacker’s can create a fake site that looks like a BYU site, but it really just a technique to trick student users.  Many student users could be tricked into giving their username and password to a fake site created by a hacker.  The hacker could then gain access to the student’s personal information, email, and financial accounts.  Once the hacker has access to the student’s information,

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