Automated phishing on the rise, experts say
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Fraudsters are achieving higher levels of automation for phishing scams, using software tools and botnets to increase the reach of their work, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
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Online criminals are thriving even in the face of new automated defenses.
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GADFLY ALREADY the internet age has given us 'phishing', when criminals use emails to persuade you to give them your bank details.  Now it seems we have the less crooked but nonetheless enraging online experience of 'philfing'  an acronym for 'purposely hiding what I'm looking for'.
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A tool that could help in the battle against spam and phishing attacks receives industry approval.
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With consumers finally getting wise to phishing attacks, scammers are hitting the phones.The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation&#39;s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) warned Thursday that so-called &quot;vishing&quot; attacks are on the rise. These are scams where criminals send an e-mail or text message to a victim, saying there has been a security problem and the victim needs to call his or her bank to reactivate a credit or debit card.&quot;Upon calling the telephone number, the recipient is greeted with &#39;Welcome to the bank of ...&#39; and then [is] requested to enter their card number in order to resolve a pending security issue,&quot; the IC3 said in its alert.In the past few years, inexpensive VoIP&#160;technology and open-source call-center software has made it inexpensive for scammers to set up phony call centers, paving the way for these new types of scams. Security experts say that vishing can be more effective than traditional phishing techniques -- which direct victims to fake Web sites -- because the voice-based attacks have not been as widely publicized.A new vishing scam involves sending text messages to cell phones, instructing victims to contact the fake online bank to renew their accounts, the IC3 said.Those who are unsure whether they have been targeted by this scam should look up the bank&#39;s phone number and call the bank directly, the IC3 advises.Operated in partnership with the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, the IC3 is a clearing house for Internet crime complaints.
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Pay-per-click advertising fraud is becoming more pervasive as spurious clicks can be generated through automated programs.
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Several major industry players and law enforcement agencies are collaborating in a new effort to respond to the rapidly growing phishing problem.
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Security researchers warned this week of a vulnerability in most Web browsers which could potentially allow scammers to launch phishing attacks from pop-up windows on trusted Web sites.
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InfoWorld - The latest information on phishing indicates that fraudsters are increasingly using malicious software to direct users to their deceptive sites.
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Cyber criminals could soon be mounting sophisticated phishing attacks that are hard to detect warn experts.
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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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McAfee issues revised forecast Data-swiping phishing sites are causing a greater security headache than expected while botnet numbers have taken an unexpected dip over recent months, according to revised security predictions by net security firm McAfee.â¦
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With one in every 400 emails now a suspected phishing attack, computer users are being encouraged to increase their knowledge, open their eyes, and pay attention.
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You know all about phishing scams, right? You know better than to click on a Web link embedded in an e-mail that purports to be from your bank, or to reply to messages requesting your user name and password. But if you think that's enough to protect yourself, think again.
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(InfoWorld) - Financially motivatedÂ malwareÂ attacks areÂ on the rise,Â with automated software packages making it easy for unskilled hackers to earn a living by sending out spam, researchers at messaging security vendor Secure Computing say. A malware kit calledÂ MPack,Â released by Russian hackers last December, allows pretty much anyone with $200 to become a master spammer because it is easy to use and exploits vulnerabilities in FireFox, Internet Explorer and Apple's QuickTime, says Dmitri Alperovitch, principal research scientist for Secure Computing. The trend that "kind of defines 2007" is the convergence of traditional e-mail with Web-based attacks, in which message recipients are prompted to click on links to malicious Web sites, rather than to download attachments, Alperovitch says. "Certainly, exploiting Web browser vulnerabilities has been common. We've seen that for a long time," he says. "Now we're seeing that capability being merged with traditional e-mail worms that sort of blanket the Internet." Information-stealing malware now accounts for 10 percent of all threats, up from 8 percent in January, new research from Secure Computing has found. Trojans comprise 63 percent of all newly discoveredÂ malware, up from 58 percent in January. SpywareÂ and phishing are also becoming more problematic as attackers use more targeted attacks to steal personal and financial information. "The barriers to entry into cyber crime have been lowered so much," Alperovitch says. "People are realizing that they can make very serious money with almost no accountability, almost complete anonymity." Quoting the analyst firm Gartner, Secure Computing's researchers say that 75 percent of enterprises will be infected by "undetectable professional-grade malware" by year-end. About 90 percent of all e-mail is malicious, but that figure will rise as the holiday season gets closer, according to Alperovitch. "There's a good chance we'll reach 95 percent, maybe higher, of all e-mails being malicious by the end of the year," he says. As the storm worm showed, the automation of online attacks is allowing the creation of more botnets, he says. E-mail delivery mechanisms are also being optimized to bypass spam filters. Unfortunately, many Web surfers are far too trusting. "If you're walking down the street and someone asks you for your Social Security number or your bank account pin, you're not going to give it to them," Alperovitch says. "Yet on the Internet, people freely give them out to anyone who sends them an e-mail message." Here are some key security trends and events identified by Secure Computing in the first eight months of 2007: -- TheÂ Storm worm,Â named after subject lines like "230 dead as storm batters Europe," and similar worms became widespread in January and the following months, with new variants being created every 15 minutes. -- A password-stealingÂ Trojan hit visitors to the Miami Dolphins' stadium Web siteÂ during the Super Bowl, when attackers took advantage of a vulnerability in Internet Explorer's rendering of vector markup language documents. -- A mass-email with pictures of Britney Spears and Paris Hilton in April lured people to a Web site that hosted a zero-day exploit related to Windows' handling of animated cursor files. Microsoft released a patch to fix the vulnerability. -- More than 10,000 European Web sites hosted malware attacks in June after being compromised. "Hidden IFRAME's" were injected into the Web sites, referring visitors to malicious sites using MPack to deliver banking Trojans. -- So-called backdoor Trojans affect home users around the world, including nearly 100,000 PCs now infected by a new wave of storm malware. "The mailings that came with subject lines such as 'You've received a postcard from a family member!' directed users to Web-hosted exploits for several different vulnerabilities; they infect users' computers and attach them to the Storm family's P2P botnet," Secure Computing writes. Network World is an InfoWorld affiliate.
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Online phishing schemes more than doubled last month, leaving financial institutions struggling to rebuff attempts to steal private account information from customers, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
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InfoWorld - Online phishing schemes increased significantly in October as financial institutions struggled to combat attempts to steal private account information from online consumers, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).