Phishing In The Channel

Rick Zeman writes "A Washington Post story details the relationships between phishers, IRC, plug-and-play phishing toolkits, and phantom web sites. 'For the past few months we've started to see phishing attacks from subcontractors, people who buy and use ready-made phishing toolkits and e-mail lists,' Orad said. 'It's gotten to the point where you don't need to know anything about spamming or computer programming to pull this off.'"

Comments

Well...

[Blue-Footed Boobie]

I remember using pre-made "proggies" on AOL back when it was new to phish users Passwords.

So, this is nothing new and people are still naive. Hopefully, though, the more it hits peoples back-pocket then more savvy they will get.

Prevention starts at home

[teiresias]

While it has become easier for phishers (and now apparently nonphishers) to prey upon mom and pop internet surfer, it still comes down to personal security. Mom and pop internet surfer won't give their ATM pin or their credit card number to a guy on the street but for some reason, the authority of the Internet removes those safeguards.

Next time you see your parents or someone who is a likely phishing canidate, please, don't roll your eyes. Warn them and try to explain the difference.

Re:Prevention starts at home

[Billly Gates]

Phishing works in numerous ways like creating fake websites like www.payypal.com which is a close of replica of paypal to trick mom and pop.

Also many malware type apps which install themselves through javascript exploits may install a keyboard logger, or even change the address bar when a user types "www.amazon.com". IE will display the correct URL but will go to a hacked copy of the site while the user is unaware.

Also most stolen credit cards are from legitimate businesses which their minimium wage employees steal and post to the net for profit. I use to work at Staples and a former supervisor was caught doing this with over 50 credit card holders.

Last, its not the user who compromises but rather the merchant who compromises. IIS is the default most popular web software for corporate America and ecommerce sites. A hacker who gain infiltrate a database with thousands of email addresses and credit numbers has a potential gold mine.

Its more complex than just protecting yourself.

The internet today is getting worse and worse and is turning into the wild west. Its a dangerous place where new pc's can get infected within 3 to 4 minutes, billions of spams go out each day, to phishing.

I was reading an older story here about the google archive of usenet including the first spam and how everyone was so shocked the internet could turn into a profit making scheme. Boy, the old internet users had no idea what was coming.

Re:Dear world,

[ftzdomino]

Typically a phisher takes advantage of the IE exploit to fake the URL also, so a vulnerable user thinks they are at a legit URL.

Soitainly!

[ackthpt]

Would someone mind explaining what a "phantom" web site is, as this term appears nowhere in TFA?

Got an email client which displays HTML email or launches a browser to handle it? I get many spoofs of paypal, ebay and various banks each day, HTML constructed to pull images from valid sources or a coopted server somewhere in the world, which look exactly like or reasonable enough to the untrained to fool you into entering account numbers, passwords, etc., which are actually intercepted and emailed to a box somewhere in the world. Phishers usually just hang around long enough to collect a few ID's and scram.

Re:Has anyone seen alternate character domains?

[bill_mcgonigle]

Bernstein warns about this. It seems like it's going to happen anyway.

Anybody know of registrars processing punycode registrations?

Re:Dear world,

[eggoeater]

It doesn't even have to be that complicated... typically the URL in the email is "correct" but the underlying link is to another site....most lusers never look at the address in the status bar.
http://www.ebay.com/
This is why /. puts the domain in brackets after the link.

Re:Classic Phishing Scam - "Lock, Stock..."-quote

[Anonymous Coward]

...as quoted from Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).

Re:Classic Phishing Scam

[lysander]

you'll look like less of a punk if you cite your references.