BRUSSELS,  (Reuters) – An email “phishing” fraud  against the European Union’s greenhouse gas Emissions Trading  Scheme (ETS) has prompted the executive European Commission to  revise its Internet security guidelines, the Commission said.

German officials said on Wednesday that online fraudsters  had targeted international carbon markets to steal emissions  permits from companies and sell them illegally.

The ETS is the 27-country European Union’s main tool to  force industry to cut greenhouse gas emissions. It allows  companies to buy emissions permits from others when cutting  those emissions is too expensive. The permits are administered  by registries.

“The Commission intends to review the security measures  applicable to ETS registries and will prepare revised security  guidelines for registries and an action plan aiming at  harmonising approach in case of future such incidents,” the EU  executive said yesterday.

The Commission said a limited number of fraudulent  transactions had been carried out, with fake emails sent to  users asking them to log on to a malicious website, pretending  to be that of a registry, and disclose their user codes and  passwords. This kind of scam is known as “phishing”.

“But the security of the Community Registry and the  Community Independent Transaction Log has not been compromised,”  the Commission said in a statement.

They said six German companies had been hit by the scam, and  companies in New Zealand and Australia had also been affected.

The EU executive said it was alerted by the Netherlands and  Norway, and it had informed all other member states to take  appropriate security measures immediately.