Hi-tech tools fuel phishing boom
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Reports suggest phishing gangs are turning to automatic tools to mount more attacks than ever.
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England-based Netcraft - an Internet services company, has released an anti-phishing toolbar that provides detailed information about the websites you are visiting at all times to help users validate fraudulent URLs.
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Do-it-yourself phishing kits are being made available for download free of charge from the Internet, according to anti-virus firm Sophos.
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As online shopping gets into full swing, phishers are setting up fraudulent e-commerce Web sites and simply waiting for victims using Google and other search engines to find them.
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With phishing attacks skyrocketing, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued a consumer alert detailing ways Web surfers can avoid being fleeced by online scammers.
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A new hacking method is causing concern for the lengths it goes to avoid detection by security software and researchers.
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The online cons known as &quot;phishing&quot; have cost US consumers $500 million, according to a study released Wednesday. In addition, the study found that three-quarters of wired Americans have noticed an increase
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In a twist, security researchers have discovered a group of hackers who are exploiting a new category of victims -- aspiring Internet scammers.A Moroccan group called &quot;Mr. Brain&quot; is offering free phishing kits on a Web site hosted in France, said Paul Mutton, Internet services developer at Netcraft, a security company in Bath, England.The software packages make it easy to quickly set up a fraudulent Web site mimicking a known brand in order to trick people into divulging credit card details or bank account numbers. Templates for spam e-mail are also included, targeting brands such as Bank of America, eBay, PayPal, and HSBC.Mr. Brain&#39;s Web site lists the kits and what kind of details each one is capable of collecting, such as usernames, passwords or Social Security numbers. Netcraft posted screenshots on its Web site.But what the aspiring scammer doesn&#39;t know is that the phishing kits are designed to send any sensitive information that&#39;s collected back to e-mail accounts controlled by Mr. Brain, Mutton said.&quot;Obviously, that&#39;s why they are offering this stuff for free,&quot; Mutton said. &quot;I was impressed by it.&quot;Mr. Brain hides the special e-mail function in a blend of PHP scripts, one of which is encrypted, Mutton said. Just in case someone decrypts it, Mr. Brain has written at the top of the file &quot;Don&#39;t need to change anything here. Created by Mr. Brain Morocco Team.&quot;The scheme seems to be targeted at new phishers, Mutton said. Mr. Brain benefits since other wannabe scammers shoulder the cost and risk of finding an ISP (Internet Service Provider) to host the phishing site, Mutton said.&quot;Essentially, they&#39;re exploiting all these novice phishers -- basically getting them to do all the hard work,&quot; Mutton said.It&#39;s difficult to tell without further research how many of the free phishing kits linked with this latest scam are live on the Internet, but Mutton said Netcraft noticed one earlier this month targeting Bank of America.&quot;Clearly, these are actively being used in phishing attacks,&quot; Mutton said.
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EBay and PayPal, once the primary lures used by phishers to trick e-mail users into giving up personal information, aren&#39;t as popular as they used to be.According to security vendor Sophos, which monitors&#160;spam and phishing&#160;e-mails to catch new blasts and determine trends, the number of messages pretending to be from eBay or its payment subsidiary PayPal has dropped from 85 percent of all phishing e-mails a year ago to 21 percent in September.&quot;That&#39;s an impressive turnaround by anyone&#39;s standards,&quot; said Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, in a prepared statement.Cluley attributes this drop in part to&#160;online initiatives&#160;by eBay and PayPal to educate their customers about phishing scams, and to PayPal&#39;s launch earlier this year of an&#160;authentication keyfob&#160;that creates a dynamic password for customers concerned with fraud.Sophos says the amount of phishing attacks circulating have stayed relatively consistent over the past year, but now phishers are using different tactics to try and fool recipients. Phishers are beginning to diversify by spoofing small credit unions, other online retailers, and overseas companies, he says.Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Some websites are now offering surfers the chance to download free &quot;phishing kits&quot; containing all the graphics, web code and text required to construct the kind of bogus sites used in internet phishing scams.
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Trying to authenticate documents or uncover forgeries is an increasingly technical pursuit.
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Do-it-yourself phishing kits are being made available for download free of charge from the internet, security watchers have warned.
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Security researcher demonstrates a way to use cross-site scripting to remotely spam an internal network printer.
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Phreaks, spoofers and spammers want to invade your home computer, and the tricks of their trade include airsnarfs, wabbits and fork bombs.
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A new software tool from WholeSecurity Inc. can spot fraudulent Web sites used in online cons known as "phishing" scams, according to a statement from the company.
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Three-quarters of wired Americans have noticed an increase in phishing incidents during the past few months, according to new data.
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Criminals are adopting the principles of modern marketing to get their products onto users' computers.