Paypal Claims Gains Against Phishers
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Paypal security chief Michael Barrett says that his company is slowly turning the tide against phishing.
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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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Net payment system Worldpay is under attack from hackers delaying transaction times for hundreds of online retailers.
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A phishing attack that masquerades as a troubling letter from the IRS is making the rounds, according to the Department of Justice.
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It's a case of the professional fraudsters scamming the amateurs with a phishing tools supply site.
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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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Online payments get more secure PayPal is paying $170m for an Israeli security analysis company called Fraud Sciences Limited.â¦
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Antispam lawsuits and enforcement actions suggest that companies taking a wink-and-nudge approach to affiliates should be careful about how they lure paying customers. By Ryan Singel.
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US consumers and businesses have lost an estimated $US500 million ($688 million) to the internet scam known as &quot;phishing&quot;, with seven out of 10 lured to fake websites, according to a survey.
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Meg Whitman describes how eBay, Paypal are combating phony e-mails and Web sites that may ensnare unsuspecting users--and drive away customers.
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Alternative browser features protection against online scams.
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PayPal, the popular payment method on auction site eBay Inc., said Wednesday the technical problems that left many users unable to access their accounts or conduct business appear to over.
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New service helps companies thwart online scams.
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Online finance service PayPal, used by mainly people on eBay, introduces a security token to tackle fraud.
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PayPal, eBay Inc.&#39;s (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) online payment service, will expand its US buyer protection program to cover up to $1,000 for qualified transactions, the company said on Thursday.
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The latest information on phishing indicates that fraudsters are increasingly using malicious software to direct users to their deceptive sites.The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) said in a new report Thursday that it saw a sharp rise in November in malware that directs users to DNS (Domain Name System) servers controlled by&#160;phishers.DNS servers play a crucial role in locating Web sites. The servers translate a domain name into an IP (Internet protocol) address, enabling a Web site to be located and accessed through a browser.Often, the phishers will set up their own DNS server that works fine most of the time but can redirect to their own malicious site.Tainting a person&#39;s DNS settings is particularly dangerous since the user probably won&#39;t notice the redirection, the APWG said.&quot;The fraudulent server replies with &#39;good&#39; answers for most domains, however, when they want to direct you to a fraudulent one, they simply modify their name server responses,&quot; the report said.Phishers are also employing malware that modifies an internal PC file called the hosts, which is used to match domain names of Web sites with IP addresses.When a person visits a Web site, the browser checks the hosts to see if it has an IP address for a particular domain name. If the hosts file is corrupted or hijacked, the browser can be directed to fetch a different Web page than the one the user intended to go to.Both attacks -- also known as pharming -- are dangerous, since a user may be typing in the correct URL (uniform resource locator) but be directed to the phishing site.The APWG reported that the overall number of unique phishing sites declined in November, but 178 different brands were targeted, a record number. By comparison, 120 brands were used in phishing attacks in October. The highest previous total was in April 2007, when 174 brands were targeted.More Middle Eastern and European financial services companies were spoofed in phishing schemes, APWG said. The financial services industry is the most targeted for fraud, comprising 93.8 percent of all phishing attacks.&#160;
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EBay is now fairly certain the theft of confidential data from 1,200 of its members happened as a result of a phishing scam.