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Security

Honeynet Revealing Actual Phishing Techniques 155

Posted by CmdrTaco from the know-your-enemy dept.
edsonie writes "CircleID is reporting on the recent Honeynet Project, 'Know your Enemy: Phishing', aimed at discovering practical information on the practice of phishing. The study reports on a number of real world examples of phishing attacks and the typical activities performed by attackers during the full lifecycle of such incidents. The research also suggests that phishing attacks "are becoming more widespread and well organized". Also with regards to the speed of such attacks, "phishing attacks can occur very rapidly, with only limited elapsed time between the initial system intrusion and a phishing web site going online with supporting spam messages to advertise the web site, and that this speed can make such attacks hard to track and prevent." Check out the full report here presenting actual techniques and tools used by phishers."
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Honeynet Revealing Actual Phishing Techniques More

Honeynet Revealing Actual Phishing Techniques

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  • Now the Honeynet (Score:3, Funny)

    by Psionicist ( 561330 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @11:45AM (#12623997)
    Now the honeynet will reveal how an actual DDoS attack work.

    Anyone have a mirror?

  • Phishing! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @11:46AM (#12624002)
    I move that all 13 year old Hackers now be referred to as 'Tom Sawyers' and that at any time there is a severe lack of 'Tom Sawyers' it is to be referred to as 'playing hookey'.

  • Actual techniques (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @11:50AM (#12624039)
    I've discovered that these Phishers ask questions and stupid people give them answers.

    Lets not make it into brain surgery. Do we need honeynets to tell us there are stupid people out there? And there always will be stupid people out there.

    • mod parent up (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I don't understand the -1 Flamebait mod. He said what the guy at +5 said, only he didn't wrap it in bullshit to make you feel good inside. The fact is that the parent is absolutely right.

    • Re:Actual techniques (Score:4, Informative)

      by NanoGator ( 522640 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @01:07PM (#12624886) Homepage Journal
      "Do we need honeynets to tell us there are stupid people out there?"

      Good god. You use a computer a lot, and that makes a lot of people stupid BUT you? Question: Did you believe in Santa Claus growing up? Would you appreciate me calling you stupid about it?

      Yeesh. Anyway, to answer your question: If Honeynets are revealing specific ways of screwing people, then specific warnings can be given out to help minimize the risk. You've never noticed how Paypal tries to very clearly explain to people not to click on paypal links in their email?

      • Re:Actual techniques (Score:2, Insightful)

        by jonadab ( 583620 )
        > Good god. You use a computer a lot, and that makes a lot of people stupid
        > BUT you?

        Susceptibility to phishing has virtually NOTHING to do with how much you do or do not use a computer. It is a function of your general level of naivete. Giving out your bank password in response to an email request is fundamentally no different from giving out your credit card number to a sleazy telemarketer who says he's from the local police charity. In both cases, somebody contacts you and claims to represent a
    • Good for you, you identified that there are stupid people in the world. Boy what an insightful analysis. The paper happens to do a wee bit more than say "we got some phishing messages, so heads up folks, phishing exists", it also offers some pretty good overview analysis (though short on raw source data) into the network structure of phishers.

      Your non-solution leaves a whole lot to be desired if you're a bank. Do you suggest banks administer an I.Q. test before they allow people to open accounts? Do yo

  • Internet Darwinism (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Nytewynd ( 829901 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @11:51AM (#12624045)
    Anyone that falls for a phishing scam is too dumb to have their money anyway.

    At work, the security guys put together a phishing test. It looked exactly like our normal web page, they made is sound official by calling it some kind of Task Force, and then they emailed everyone a link to the password checker. It supposedly tested your password for security difficulty. You enter your ID and password and it would email you back the results.

    I sent the link to the security guys and got an "Attaboy". About half of the people ended up on the list of idiots that handed out their secure passwords over the internet.

    What goes through someone's head to enter passwords, bank account info, or personal identity information over the Internet? Don't people consider that the companies supposedly asking for this stuff should already have it. You bank is never going to ask you for your account number over email. They already have it!

    • Re:Internet Darwinism (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Phishers rely on the fact that on the Internet(tm), you're a retard until proven innocent.

      So few are acquitted.
    • How do you know those were the actual passwords? (All right, probably most were, but that is a severe problem with this kind of study.)

      You know the survey where people were offered a pen or something in exchange for their password? I would have gone "Sure... my password is 'gull1ble'". Free pen, no security risk.

    • They're getting MUCH better at it (Score:5, Insightful)

      by DG ( 989 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:08PM (#12624237) Homepage Journal
      That might have been true once upon a time, but the phishers are getting VERY good at hiding their phish.

      I've seen a PayPal phish that was very sophisticated, doing things like putting bogus info into the URL bar, duplicating the layout of PayPal's site EXACTLY... it turned out to be very difficult to spot the smoking gun - I had to go look at the raw HTML to find it.

      Had I not been as paranoid as I am, it could have easily suckered me.

      Read the article, and follow some of the links to the actual attacks. It's amazing how good they are. (It's equally amazing that a web browser would do anything on link mouseover EXCEPT show the real target of a link!)

      Yes, there are plenty of stupid people - some people actually buy products from spam, or send money to Nigeria, etc etc. But the quality of the phishers is getting so good that it is hard to tell (in some cases) what is valid or what is not.

      DG
      • It's equally amazing that a web browser would do anything on link mouseover EXCEPT show the real target of a link!)
        it's a javascript one-liner ... or for those too lazy/dumb/whatever, just a url that goes to a referrer to bounce the click elsewhere (like a lot of goatse.cx links were using google's "I feel lucky")
      • (It's equally amazing that a web browser would do anything on link mouseover EXCEPT show the real target of a link!)

        Absolutely! It amazes me that webbrowsers are so willingly stupid. That's why I use something like Links or Lynx for certain browsing tasks. Unfortunately, even Links has javascript these days... so I'm probably just relying on security by obscurity to some degree.

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:19PM (#12624348)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re:They're getting MUCH better at it (Score:1, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yes, there are plenty of stupid people - some people actually buy products from spam, or send money to Nigeria, etc etc. But the quality of the phishers is getting so good that it is hard to tell (in some cases) what is valid or what is not.

        Maybe you should just admit that you are almost too stupid to be on the Internet?
      • In my experience, the best quick-and-easy way to spot a PayPal phish is to check the salutation at the beginning of the email. If it addresses you as "Dear Valued PayPal Customer" or some such, it's definitely a phish. PayPal always addresses you by name in their emails.

        This, I have found, is not only an easy way for us geeks to spot phishers, but a way we can easily explain to non-geeks how to spot them.

        • Scams involving paypal are easy to spot. They're using paypal. If the CC's don't trust someone enough to give them a point-o'-sale, why do you?

          Paypal's customer list is exactly a list of people foolish enough to fall for the convenience argument. (And yes I was that foolish. I was too lazy to have myself removed. Fortunately I never actually linked it to any
        • Don't rely on this.

          I get spam emails addressed to "David Dennis" all the time.

          It would not be difficult for someone to emulate real PayPal emails much better than is currently being done, and as the law of diminishing returns impacts this kind of attack, I'm sure it will happen.

          It used to be that you could reliably identify these attacks just because of their abysmal English, but that's become less true in the past few months.

          What's foolproof is this: Anything asking for you to type in your ID and passw
      • the quality of the phishers is getting so good that it is hard to tell (in some cases) what is valid or what is not.

        I generally use the street metaphor. Do not give any information over the internet that you wouldn't give to a stranger that approaches you on the street.

        There will always be phishers who will be able to get at least some victims. Just as there are people who commit fraud without using the internet. Some are very good at what they do, like Victor Lustig [wikipedia.org], who sold the Eiffel tower in 1925 -

    • Re:Internet Darwinism (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      > Anyone that falls for a phishing scam is too dumb to have their money anyway.

      http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/quiztest.htm l [mailfrontier.com]

      (use IE, not the Fox)

      Did you get 100% correct on the first try (I didn't, I only got 9 out of 10)? Educating the internet population to be aware of the varied and increasingly sophisticated scamming variants is a hopeless proposition in my opinion.

      • Re:Internet Darwinism (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        100%- Simply treat them ALL as phishes. There is NO legit reason why my bank (or whatever) would be emailing me, asking me to click a link in the email.

        Besides, I don't have an account with any of those companies, so I know they are all false. ;-)

        .

        .
        To confirm you're not a script,
        please type the text shown in this image: bicswns

        • Re:Internet Darwinism (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mcmonkey ( 96054 )

          100%- Simply treat them ALL as phishes. There is NO legit reason why my bank (or whatever) would be emailing me, asking me to click a link in the email.

          Besides, I don't have an account with any of those companies, so I know they are all false. ;-)

          100% correct. Even for companies I do have an account with, no reason there would ever be a link in an email I need to click. I do have one credit card set up to send me an email when the monthly statement is ready, but when I view that statement, I'll s

        • > 100%- Simply treat them ALL as phishes.

          This is what the banks refer to as "brand damage". My bank would love to sell me a money market account and actually link to their own promotion. Maybe not right to my account page, but what stops a phisher from copying entire site structures?

          I realize that you're one of the superior enlightened few that cannot be marketed to, but banks do have products to promote to the rest of the unwashed masses.

          • banks do have products to promote to the rest of the unwashed masses.

            So what? Why do I have to waste my bandwith and storage space downloading it? Just because it was a legitimate e-mail, doesn't mean it is a legitimate way to let me know about their product. I don't care if it is Spam or a Phish, I don't want to read it, and will delete it on sight. Unless I specifically requested information from a company, I don't feel any loss.

            [/rant]
            • Can you really not comprehend the notion that banks have customers, that they send marketing email to these existing customers, AND that these customers sometimes get phished?

              Your opinions on marketing are irrelevant to the concept of brand damage.
      • I did get 100% on the first try.

        Also, worked fine in Firefox for me.
        • That site shows you gifs of actualy emails and expects you to tell the difference visually?

          I looked at the first one and realized it's sophisticated enough to need to look at the source first.. Outlook is easily spoofable with links so there isn't enough information to make a determination. Plus we have no idea whether the recipient is *really* a member of the bank anyway.

          Pretty useless test.

          • Re:Internet Darwinism (Score:2, Informative)

            by edx0r ( 785999 )
            "I looked at the first one and realized it's sophisticated enough to need to look at the source first."

            Exactly the point of the test, I should think. Given that the average user isn't likely to look at source, or perhaps may not even know how to look at source, asking to judge what is a phish and what isn't purely by visual inspection helps to highlight why it is these things so often work against the unsophisticated computer user.

    • Re:Internet Darwinism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF ( 813746 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:36PM (#12624533)

      You bank is never going to ask you for your account number over email. They already have it!

      Part of the reason this social engineering is successful is that companies, banks, large organizations are so lousy at keeping accurate records. Have you never had a bank screw up your name, or your balance, or some other company you do business with charge you for something you never ordered or fail to charge you for something you have ordered? I've had all these things happen, and it makes it completely unsurprising that a bank would lose your information or even have a policy of verifying your account password via e-mail. It is ridiculous and insecure and generally a really stupid idea, which is why it seems plausible that some lumbering bureaucracy would do it. Obviously, I would never give out sensitive information via e-mail, but I would actually not be surprised if some company requested it via that method. Just because it looks like phishing, does not mean it is, it could just be someone being really dumb. There is plenty of blame to go around here.

      • ..., banks, ... are so lousy at keeping accurate records.

        In the 20 years I have had bank accounts, they screwed up exactly *once*. A few €'s on an interest calculation. I wrote a letter and got my money back. My account number, my address, my name, my birthdate were always correct. Actually, banks (at least the serious ones) are absolutely paranoid about knowing as much as they can about you. They datamine that stuff and profile you. If you didn't know that, you are being naive. To a bank, kno

        • They datamine that stuff and profile you. If you didn't know that, you are being naive. To a bank, knowing the customer is one of the most important things.

          Just because the collect a lot of data on their own or buy it from outside sources does not mean it is accurate.

          Sure, a transaction may be two days late (which can be very sucky for many clients), but it's only the transaction.

          I've found two different banks each to have an incorrect balance for my account because once they charged me $400 in ATM f

          • > Interesting you should mention that. I've been looking to open a new money market account. There are five banks within a few blocks of my house and I figured one of them would have decent online banking. Three of them will not even load the online banking in anything but IE

            Then switch banks. Wamu, Wells, and Citi all have zero problems with firefox. Call the bank and tell them why. Don't come off like some smug platform evangelist, just say "your internet banking doesn't work with my computer and t

            • Then switch banks. Wamu, Wells, and Citi all have zero problems with firefox. Call the bank and tell them why.

              As I mentioned two of the banks do work with Firefox (and Safari my preferred browser) but none of them offer decent online security options such as are commonly offered in many parts of Europe. as for contacting them, I e-mailed two of the bank's feedback e-mail addresses and politely mentioned why I was going with a competitor. One did not even have an e-mail or working link just broken "contac

              • Very, very few online banking providers (most banks don't run or write their own online banking backend) have the security that you are looking for.

                You might try one of the internet only banks for that type of stuff.

                It just hasn't gotten a foothold in the USA like in Europe.

    • Re:Internet Darwinism (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NetSettler ( 460623 ) <kent-slashdot@nhplace.com> on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:54PM (#12624727) Homepage Journal

      Anyone that falls for a phishing scam is too dumb to have their money anyway.

      I would venture a guess that among the vulnerable are the parents and/or grandparents of most of the people who read Slashdot. You don't see an ethical obligation on the party of the technically savvy to care about and protect the technically unsavvy? Shame on you.

      Software can be anything we make it be. The technologists who have shaped the world have made many choices and will continue to make choices about what our programs will and won't do, how information will be presented, etc. They make those choices on behalf of the public, and they cannot simply shirk responsibility in this way.

      Almost all technological problems of this kind reduce to our desire to get as far as possible as fast as possible, and damn any ill side-effects. If browsers required you to know and approve each site before you connected to it, this wouldn't happen. "But that would slow us all down," I can hear you say. The world needs this now, now, now. Indeed, we get benefits by not holding back. But we get ill effects, too, and we can't just poo poo those as not our responsibility. They follow directly from the design decisions we make on behalf of our parents and friends, people who often don't know we're making them nor the consequences of their having been made.

      If we spent half as much time, energy, and intellect solving social problems as we do solving technical ones, I suspect the world would be happier.

      • I would venture a guess that among the vulnerable are the parents and/or grandparents of most of the people who read Slashdot. You don't see an ethical obligation on the party of the technically savvy to care about and protect the technically unsavvy? Shame on you.

        You are absolutely correct. That is why I have attempted to teach my parents about the dangers of phishing, malware, and viruses. It still doesn't stop my father from installing Gator 3 times a day, but at least I am trying.

        Like I said in

        • We'll never build technology that always protects people from themselves without making it overly intrusive.

          Always? No. But sometimes? Often? I wouldn't be so defeatist on those options. If you meant literally what you said, then I'd say you're speaking way too narrowly. If you just mean "sometimes" or "often", and were exaggerating, then I'd say your statement is somewhere between defeatist and outright untrue.

          People don't consider food, condoms, kitchen knives, air travel, or dentistry "safe"

    • You bank is never going to ask you for your account number over email. They already have it!

      Maybe so, but they definitely ask you for your account number and password when you login to their website.

      Phishers setup a fake website to look like the bank and then all they have to do is lure the suckers to the fake website. And users have been conditioned to type their usernames and passwords into the fake website because they have been conditioned to type the same information into the real website.

      W

    • First, not everyone knows the underlying structure of the internet, what the protocols are, and what the risks are. A good analogy is a car. Most do not know how complex a car is, and how easy it would be to die at high speeds. Most are not able to understand the physics of tire against road, and how fragile and small that contact patch is. Those who do buy cars that are stable and tires that are over engineered for the application. Those that do understand would like to say that those who have acciden
    • I would contend that years of mandatory public schooling has "trained" most folks to be ideal worker bees: do what you're told without thought or question. Is it any surprise that this mentality has boiled over into not just face-to-face instructions, but also instructions over email?
    • At work, the security guys put together a phishing test. It looked exactly like our normal web page, they made is sound official by calling it some kind of Task Force, and then they emailed everyone a link to the password checker. It supposedly tested your password for security difficulty. You enter your ID and password and it would email you back the results.
      It occured to me that the phishers need some kind of transaction processing, which should deposit any money into their account; and transaction proc

  • This is all very well and good, (Score:3, Insightful)

    by DoraLives ( 622001 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @11:52AM (#12624058)
    but it's like pushing down the bubble in a waterbed. We have a slithering, morphing target, and, now that I think about it, the target isn't the target.

    End users are the target and there's no way in hell ANYbody will ever change that little term in the equation.

  • The best defense... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by LegendOfLink ( 574790 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @11:53AM (#12624077) Homepage
    ...is still the education of users. I can't tell you how many e-mails get stuck in our company SPAM filters that mimick phony PayPal accounts. You get that one user who thinks the message is real, and there goes your identity.
    • Argh, it's "spam" not "SPAM". SPAM is a foodstuff, spam is the email variety.

    • Re:The best defense... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tehshen ( 794722 ) <tehshen@gmail.com> on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:16PM (#12624325)
      One of the things e-mail clients could use from Gmail is how it handles said PayPal phishes. It lets through the message, but puts up a big red box saying:
      Warning: This message may not be from whom it claims to be. Beware of following any links in it or of providing the sender with any personal information.

      Which doesn't get in the way, and is startling enough to not be ignored. It makes most users think "Is this a real e-mail?", and if it's on some company network, they could ask for help and be told not to reply, then slowly learn not to by themselves.
    • the education of users

      I used to think this way too, but after 8 years in IT, I'd rather rely on technology than users (technology isn't much to rely on, but at least it can be reasoned with).
    • Banks have been very slow at educating their users. They still have a number of problems with their email and website policies. For example:
      • Chase.com lets you log in from an insecure webpage (the homepage) with a fake "security lock" image to make you think it's safe. This site is vunerable to man in the middle attacks and does not educate users to only login from a site that says https://chase.com/ [chase.com]
      • Some banks / credit cards use generic domains for loggging on. Citibank uses a domain called "accou
  • appreciate any techniques you may want to offer on how to phish out honey. Damn bear always getting his head stuck.....

  • Mirrors (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:00PM (#12624150)
    Europe

    Greece - http://honeynet.phrapes.net/ [phrapes.net]
    Romania - http://honeynet.iasi.roedu.net/ [roedu.net]
    Croatia - http://honeynet.lss.hr/ [honeynet.lss.hr]
    France - http://honeynet.startx.fr/ [startx.fr]
    Germany - http://honeynet.fh.net/ [fh.net]
    Germany - http://honeynet.spenneberg.org/ [spenneberg.org]
    Germany - http://project.honeynet.de/ [honeynet.de]
    Ireland - http://honeynet.heanet.ie/ [heanet.ie]
    Italy - http://honeynet.securityinfos.com/ [securityinfos.com]
    Netherlands - http://honeynet.hackers.nl/ [hackers.nl]
    Netherlands - http://honeynet.evilcoder.org/ [evilcoder.org]
    United Kingdom - http://honeynet.ntcity.co.uk/ [ntcity.co.uk]
    Asia

    India - http://honeynet.tiet.ac.in/ [tiet.ac.in]
    Phillipines - http://honeynet.opensourcecommunity.ph/ [opensourcecommunity.ph]
    Singapore - http://www.security.org.sg/honeynet/ [security.org.sg]
    Korea - http://honeynet.secuwiz.com/ [secuwiz.com]
    Malaysia - http://honeynet.0ni0n.org/ [0ni0n.org]
    China - http://honeynet.xfocus.net/ [xfocus.net]
    South America

    Brazil - http://mirror.honeynet.org.br/ [honeynet.org.br]
    North America

    Canada - http://honeynet.ihackedthisbox.com/ [ihackedthisbox.com]
    USA, NY - http://www.clientbox.net/ [clientbox.net]
    USA, TX - http://honeynet.5dollarwhitebox.org/ [5dollarwhitebox.org]
    USA, OH - http://mirror.clevelandhoneynet.org/ [clevelandhoneynet.org]
    USA, VA - http://honeynet.streetchemist.com/ [streetchemist.com]

  • This is getting really frustrating (Score:4, Interesting)

    by AT-SkyWalker ( 610033 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:01PM (#12624158)
    I've noticed that the number of messages I'm getting from Paypal and EBay are increasing dramatically.

    The problem is that they are pretty organized; you get one, then a follow up, then a final warning and so on. I can imagine that a majority of Mom and Pop type of users finally succumb to theses sort of attacks since they seem to be pretty well coherent !

    • Mom and Pop type of users finally succumb to theses sort of attacks since they seem to be pretty well coherent !

      All the phishers have to do is buy a dictionary, and start spelling their mails right, and I believe they'll hook a lot more victims.

  • Bad definition. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chmarr ( 18662 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:03PM (#12624181)
    From the article:
    The term phishing ("password harvesting fishing")...


    "Password harvested fishing"??? What a crock! The 'ph' is just a 'cooler' version of an 'f'. Like 'phreaking' or 'phat'.

    Someone clearly tried too figure out where the term came from, and completely missed the obvioius :)

  • It can be quite difficult to resist (Score:4, Interesting)

    by what about ( 730877 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:11PM (#12624270) Homepage

    I got an email stating that an order had been placed with my name and it was being delivered. Now, I have two choices:

    Do nothing and mybe allow some delivery of goods that I do not want (I am in UK, not US) and then have to return them or anyway cancel the payment (can be difficult if made by debit card) even if the crook got the numbers from looking at you at the supermarket.

    Have a look and see what it is about.

    The ECommerce site was a troian installer, it didn't work since I user Opera and have activeX disabled (Quite interesting all the tecnique they used)

    The point is that sometime it is quite difficult to know if something is legitimate or not and to me the only solution is to have less wizybang applications and more reliable ones.

    No activex, plain HTML browsing.

    Banks should NOT use funny addresses for part of their pages, just one clear address.

    No magic jumping between applications, no magic installing, make it painful to install something taken from the network !

    • I got an email stating that an order had been placed with my name and it was being delivered. Now, I have two choices:

      Sorry, I fail to see why this is a problem. I mean you knew you didn't order it, right?

      So fucking what if something turns up at your door? I'd be like "Great! Free stuff!".

      Do you think that someone would steal your card details and then use them to order something for you? It doesn't seem likely to me.

      Why couldn't you just check with your bank or credit card provider? I would expect the
      • I know if someone sends you something you didn't order in the US, it's a gift, but it's not safe to assume the gift rule in other countries. By sending you something they are possibly making it appear that it was a legit order when that is not the case. If the clowns on the Infomercials can make money by sending trash, refunding the purchase price and keeping the "Shipping and Handling Fee" and then abandoming the goods on site, then selling stuff with stolen CC details should make money too.
    • I wouldn't have bothered checking the bogus e-commerce site; I'd have checked with my bank for any fraudulent charges, put them in dispute and have them issue me a fresh card # if so, and if anything actually *did* show up at my door, keep it.

      And in Thunderbird, the fake addresses on the phishing attempts that get through the spam filters show up when I hover over them. Then I nuke 'em. You're using the wrong mailer...

  • this speed can make such attacks hard to track and prevent

    Speed? Speed doesn't seem to be a requirement for a successful phish. I've given up complaining to ISPs who are hosting phishing sites because there seems to be no action taken against them. Sure if the site is on a compromised server in Korea or Vietnam I dont expect much, but when its a mainstream US ISP its a bit disheartening to get either an auto-responder or no response and then see that the site is still up weeks after bothering to tell the

    • Re:Speed? (Score:3, Insightful)

      by sharp-bang ( 311928 )
      Try complaining to the bank or other business being targeted, and identify the ISP in your complaint.

      As papers like this one reveal the methods of phishers, it's going to be much more difficult for ISPs to claim ignorance of the problem, because knowledge of tools and methods contribute to standards of due care from which liability arises. The threat of legal action might improve the overall response.
      • Try complaining to the bank or other business being targeted, and identify the ISP in your complaint.

        I do/did. For example here is a link [nghiahanh.net] to a submit form that is used in a paypal phish to collect credit card and account details. It then redirects to the real paypal logon using the phished credentials. I advised Yahoo (the ISP) and Paypal a month ago and the site is still up.

  • Strange Phenomenon (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nytewynd ( 829901 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:16PM (#12624318)
    One thing I don't understand about phishing is why it works so well. I imagine it is probably just the volume of the attacks, so they are more likely to catch an idiot than in the past.

    Consider:
    1. Most people wouldn't give out a credit card number randomly over the phone
    2. Most people wouldn't return junk mail that asked for a social security number
    3. Most people wouldn't walk up to a complete stranger on the street and hand them their ATM card and PIN

    I think computers mystify older people to the point where they lose their mind. I see it in general. My friend's father-in-law had a "computer question" for me about ebay. He wanted me to tell him how to determine the price he should sell something for. I tried to explain to him that his question had nothing to do with ebay itself, but he was so caught up in the process of selling on ebay, he was totally confused.

    Maybe phishing works so well because some people are so confused by computers in general, they simply assume that their bank would ask them for this information over email (from an account named bank_stealer@hotmail.com).

    Dealing with this kind of leads to the appropriate saying:

    You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day, or teach him to fish and feed him for the rest of his life.

    You can't get rid of phishing by blocking sites. You have to do it by educating people not to enter their info.
    • Most people don't respond to phishing e-mails, it's just really easy to send a lot of them for cheap. I don't know whether there's a higher success ratio for phishing e-mails than for analog-type scams; however, I do know that I've read of studies where people claimed to be doing a study on passwords and security and gathered many peoples' passwords in person off the street.

    • Re:Strange Phenomenon (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      There is one major difference - the economics of spam, specifically how cheap and anonymously junk mail can be sent out.

      You are right, phishing is not a problem over the telephone, but supposed a crook had these abilities:

      1. The ability to send out hundreds of thousands of phone calls daily
      2. Each of these thousands of calls would be made by someone that sounds somewhat professional, specifically as professional as phishing web sites look
      3. Pretty much absolute anonymity (in other words, they could not be tra

    • Re:Strange Phenomenon (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Have Blue ( 616 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @01:14PM (#12624953) Homepage
      It's not that simple. Consider the following situations:
      1. You receive a phone call. The caller ID says it is from a firm you do business with frequently. The caller informs you that there is a problem with the credit information for your most recent order, and that you must provide it again. Maybe you really do have a most recent order with that company, and it's plausible that human error somewhere in the process resulted in your CC info getting damaged (the order was placed over the phone, or in person). Maybe this is for a pretty important item that you can't spend extra days waiting for if there really is a problem with your order.
      2. You receive a letter on what appears to be official government letterhead, with a return address that could plausibly be a government office in the state capitol. The letter informs you that you are in danger of noncompliance with obscure regulations, and includes a form to fill out so that the agency will, for a small fee, send you materials you need to remain in the clear and avoid harsh penalties.
      3. You are standing in line at a bank waiting to see a clerk. A person approaches you wearing the uniform of a bank employee and carrying papers that look like bank documents and offers to help you. He leads you to an empty desk and walks you through the task you would like to have performed, and tells you the process will be completed in a day or two. You leave without noting his name.
      All of these situations could easily occur in real life and all of them could easily be scams. Unless you are automatically paranoid at all times or willing to go out of your way to spend time on verification, chances are you'd fall for at least one of them. We got one of the second type at work the other day- it was very convincing, and in all honesty if it was my responsibility to handle it I would have been taken in.
    • 1. Most people wouldn't give out a credit card number randomly over the phone

      I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one. I think a phone call would have even more weight than an official looking e-mail, and naive people would happily supply their account information. Especially if you work off of the phone book, you could call and say "mr. So and So, we show we have an account with you, at XXX address. As the first step in our verification, please verify your account number. (proceeds to ask for
    • It's true that most phishing attempts appear obvious to the not-so-untrained eye, following the familiar pattern of "There's a problem with your account; please log in here to verify your details".

      However, I receive the occasional promotional email from my bank, and have previously used the links provided to log in, purely because getting the email reminded me about a bill I need to pay, or that I need to check if a payment has been received or something. It was only afterwards I realised what I'd done, an

    • You can give a man a fish and feed him for a day

      Or you can teach him to phish, and he should be set for life.
    • > 1. Most people wouldn't give out a credit card number randomly over the phone

      You'd be very surprised. Phishing is a variation of a scam that has been around as long as the telephone. Ever heard of the "bank examiner scam"? Hell, some brave souls were probably even doing it door to door before then, though it's easier to do charity scams that way.
    • 3. Most people wouldn't walk up to a complete stranger on the street and hand them their ATM card and PIN


      Well, normally I wouldn't, but he seemed like a nice man, and he promised he'd return my card after he was finished with it.
  • In other words...

    HoneyNet Developers: "Holy shit, it actually WORKED! Quick, submit a story to Slashdot!"

  • New Phishing Technique ... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by tomhudson ( 43916 ) <barbara.hudson@b ... m ['son' in gap]> on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:49PM (#12624691) Journal
    After reading TFA, it strikes me that the easiest way to get personal details is to set up a honeypot, allow it to be "compromised" by phishers, and log all the data their victims post to your honeypot (before modifying it so that the phishers don't get valid data).

    This way, the phishers are doing all the hard work (mass email spam, etc), and getting none of the benefit.

    The article even goes on to tell you what tools to use ... so expect this to be the next level of phishing scam.

    I'm almost tempted ... must resist the dark side ... do you think we can get the phishers to offer up free pr0n? [tt]

    • Well partner today's your lucky day, all of the free p()rn you can stand, from all of the best sites like goatse.cx, tubgirls and even lemonparty is yours for absolutely free! All we need is a valid credit card number, expiration date purely for age verification and your valid E-mail address!

  • Easier way (Score:3, Insightful)

    by int999 ( 775497 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @12:54PM (#12624736)
    What prevents someone from simply setting up an online store site, complete with pictures of items and everything, and with rockbottom prices? Run it for a week, collect credit card numbers from orders, then close shop. If you do it right, it can be untraceable.
    • That's preposterous. The only thing you could usefully do is try to skim money off each card one at a time, in an inconspicuous way. Its not hard to trace credit card activity though, and you will get caught before long.
  • All these stories that have recently surfaced, have caused grief to the innocent, the original phishers or phishheads as most are refferred to. My boss, who knows I used to go to phish shows, just asked me about all the phishing stories in the news. Was kinda funny explaining to him that a phish-head http://phish.net/ [phish.net] or http://phish.com/ [phish.com] has nothing to do with these stories.

  • weird coincidence (Score:2, Interesting)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 )
    i got my first phish email this morning trying to get my paypal info; the link went to an ip address in Korea

    within minutes, i browsed to slashdot and saw this was the current top story

    creeeeepy
  • "phishing attacks "are becoming more widespread and well organized"...
    No s**t! The Gmail "more options" pull down originally had a "report phishing" option...I just noticed yesterday [while noting 12 notices from paypal and ebay accounts I do not have] that they changed the option to read "report NOT phishing" after you have marked one email as a phishing attempt. It looks as if the majority of spam I get is now phishing spam. If you do use the "report" options make sure you are sending the right messa
  • There are so many scams associated with eBay, PayPal, and Washington Mutual that it's not worth dealing with any of them. Until those big companies figure out a way to stop this stuff, take your business elsewhere. That will create political pressure to fix the problem. Let their lobbyists on K street work the problem.
    • scams associated with eBay, PayPal, during the last/current resession, eBay was reported to account for 25% of the retail activity (not online retail but retail period) in the US which means a lot of eBay and PayPals accounts to hit by random emails
      • Actually, this is very good advice. Just like popular opearting systems (i.e. Windows) are more likely to be the target of viruses, these popular services are more likely to be associated with fraud. I avoid PayPal and WAMU for exactly this reason.

  • Rent a botnet here! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Tuesday May 24, 2005 @02:13PM (#12625627) Homepage
    You, too, can run a phishing scam. You'll need a botnet, bulk-friendly hosting, and bulletproof credit card processing. And you can get them all here. [specialham.com]

    Yes, "Specialham", the spammer hangout, is back! "SpecialHam is the premier online destination for email marketing professionals." With great new topics like "What are the most anonymous ways to transfer money". [specialham.com]

    That site seems to be aimed at low end and clueless spammers.

    Further up the food chain, we have Black Box Hosting [blackboxhosting.com]. "Fully featured bullet proof dedicated server. Allows direct mailing and website hosting. All our plans allow Adult, Gambling and Pharmacy Content." They also offer "Mailing Servers" [blackboxhosting.com]. You have to supply your own list of proxies, and your own bulk mailing program. They recommend DarkMailer. [dark-mailer.com]

    So you go on Specialham and rent some open proxies. Then order a mailing server and a web server from Black Box Hosting. Run your scam. Launder the money through an offshore credit card processor [offshoreprocessing.net]. Profit!

    What we really need in honeynets is for about 10% of these support operations to be sting operations run by law enforcement. That would make phishing and spamming a much higher risk operation.

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