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| Firms to start fight against Phishing |
| Wednesday, December 08, 2004 at 23:18 by Rich Kavanagh |
Internet based companies and law-enforcement agencies alike have got together to form a joint enforcement initiative called Digital PhishNet, a programme designed to ensnare those who perpetrate phishing attacks.
Its goals are simple: to identify, arrest and hold accountable, those that are involved in all levels of phishing attacks
Members of Digital PhishNet include ISPs, online auctions and financial institutions. Authorities include the FBI, Secret Service, US Postal Inspection Service and the Federal Trade Commission. They will work together to track down online scam artists who pose as banks and other legitimate businesses, a practice known as "Phishing".
Businesses will be able to notify the FBI and other authorities instantly when they see a new phishing attack - a necessary move when pursuing fly-by-night scam artists who close up shop quickly.
Phishing has emerged as a potent online threat over the past two years, combining email with slick, fake, web sites that trick consumers into giving out bank-account details, passwords and other sensitive information. Phishing emails often come cloaked in the corporate logos of legitimate businesses like eBay or Citibank, bearing messages like "Account update needed".
Internet users who click on a link in the message are directed to a fake web site, asking for their account numbers or details. Scam artists then resell that information to identity thieves or use it themselves.
Dan Larkin at the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) said,
"The key to stopping phishers and bringing them to justice is to identify and target them quickly. Phishers create and dismantle these phony sites very, very fast, stockpiling credit card numbers, passcodes and other personal financial information over the course of just a couple of days, in order to avoid detection. Digital PhishNet is a powerful response to this type of online fraud because it facilitates critical data collection between a large number of the targets of these crimes -- those who are on the front lines of the fight against phishing -- and establishes a pipeline directly to law enforcement, in real time, before the phisher has had time to disappear back into the anonymity of cyberspace."
Nearly 1,200 phishing sites and 7,000 unique phishing e-mail messages were reported last month alone to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.
A quote on the Digital PhishNet site says it all,
Phishing is about to become a very dangerous sport.
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I get few attacks on my system, but am quite suspicious, so i pass up a lot of "bargains"; I guess I must be a poor prospect for fhishers. I have Symantec package of anti-viruses.
Perhaps the time has come when Congress should establish a single authority to deal with Internet traffic. Innovative techniques that include profile analysis should already be available; it should be a matter of setting up the system and concentrating on internet traffic torts.
Ed McKee |
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Phishing doesn't have anything to do with your anti-virus software or bargains. Phishing is performed by an email that you get in your inbox. It looks like it came from "ebay" or "citibank" or whoever you may have an account with. So it may look like ebay just asking you to retype and verify your information when infact it's not really ebay. It's someone collecting information and they made it look like it was ebay getting it. The address it's coming from will even be something like verification@ebay.com or some other variant that looks professional. It's quite simple to make it look like an email has been sent from someone else.
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| Get the bastards! At least there will be less spam if they get caught. |
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