Phishing

In computing, phishing (also known as carding and spoofing) is a form of social engineering, characterized by attempts to fraudulently get sensitive information, such as passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy person or business in an apparently official electronic communication, such as an email or an instant message. The term phishing arises from the use of increasingly sophisticated lures to "fish" for users' financial information and passwords. See the outlook 2003 spam blocker review to help prevent these attacks.

With the growing number of told phishing incidents, other methods of protection have been needed. Attempts include legislation, user training, and technical measures. Make certain to complete your outlook spam filter registration process to keep your filter up to date.

History of phishing

The first recorded mention of phishing is on the alt.2600 hacker newsgroup in January 1996, although the term may have appeared even earlier in the printed edition of the hacker newsletter "2600 Magazine". The term phishing was coined by crackers attempting to "fish" for accounts from unsuspecting AOL members; ph is a common hacker replacement for f, and is a nod to an older form of hacking known as "phone phreaking."

Early phishing on AOL

Those who would later phish on AOL during the 1990s originally created accounts on AOL with fake, algorithmically generated credit card numbers — these accounts could last weeks or even months until new ones were needed. AOL next brought in measures in late 1995 to prevent this, so early AOL crackers resorted to phishing for legitimate AOL accounts.

Phishing on AOL was closely associated with the warez community that exchanged pirated software. A cracker might pose as an AOL staff member and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking the victim to show his or her password. To lure the victim into giving up sensitive information the message might include text such as "check your account" or "confirm billing information". Once the victim had sent his or her password, the attacker could then access the victim's account and use it for various criminal purposes, such as spamming. Both phishing and warezing on AOL generally wanted custom-written programs, such as the colorfully named AOHell.

In 1997, AOL's policy enforcement about phishing and warez became stricter and forced pirated software off AOL servers. Around the same time phishing was so prevalent on AOL that AOL added a line on all instant messages saying, "no one working at AOL will ask for your password or billing information". AOL simultaneously developed a system to quickly deactivate any account involved in phishing — booting them offline — often before their phishes (a term for the victims of a "phish") could respond. Phishers temporarily moved to AOL Instant Messenger (AIM), since they could not be banned from the AIM server. The shutting down of the warez scene on AOL caused most phishers to leave the service, and many phishers — often young teens in their heyday — grew out of the habit.

Recent phishing attempts

More recent phishing attempts have started to target the customers of banks and online payment services. While the first such examples were sent indiscriminately in the hope of finding a customer of a given bank or service, recent research has shown that phishers may in principle be able to establish what bank a potential victim has a relationship with, and then send an appropriate spoofed email to this victim. In general such targeted versions of phishing have been termed spear phishing. The goal is to get phish and spam free in outlook.

Phishing techniques

Most methods of phishing use some form of technical deception designed to make a link in an email appear to belong to the spoofed organization. Some outlook express spam blockers can catch these. Misspelled URLs or the use of subdomains are common tricks used by phishers, such as this example URL, http://www.yourbank.com.example.com/. One other method of spoofing links used web addresses containing the @ symbol. For example, the link http://www.google.com@members.tripod.com/ may deceive a casual observer into believing that the link will open a page on www.google.com, whereas the link directs the browser to a page on members.tripod.com. This method has since been closed off in the Mozilla and Internet Explorer browsers and can be reduced by outlook express spam blocking. This is how to block spam with outlook as well.

In another popular method of phishing, an attacker uses a bank or service's own scripts against the victim. These types of attacks are particularly problematic, because they direct the user to sign in at their bank or service's own web pages, where everything from the web address to the security certificates appears correct. In this attack method (known as Cross Site Scripting) users may get a message saying that they have to "verify" their account, by following a link to what appears an authentic website; in reality, the link is crafted to carry out this attack, although it is very difficult to spot without specialist knowledge.

A further problem with URLs has been found in the handling of Internationalized domain names (IDN) in web browsers, that might allow visually identical web addresses to lead to different, possibly malicious, websites. Despite the publicity surrounding the flaw, known as IDN spoofing, no known phishing attacks have yet taken advantage of it.

Damage caused by phishing

A chart showing the increase in phishing reports from October 2004 to June 2005. The damage caused by phishing ranges from loss of access to email to great financial loss. An advanced spam trapper for outlook can be trained to catch phishing in time. However, this style of identity theft is becoming more popular, because of the ease with which unsuspecting people often divulge personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers and social security numbers. Once this information is acquired, the phishers may use a person's details to create fake accounts in a victim's name, ruin a victim's credit, or even prevent victims from accessing their own accounts. You may try searching for a free outlook spam killer that can also help with phishing.

It is estimated that between May 2004 and May 2005, roughly 1.2 million computer users in the United States gone through losses caused by phishing, totaling about $929 million USD. U.S. businesses lose an estimated $2 billion USD a year as their clients become victims. The United Kingdom also suffers from the immense increase in phishing. In March 2005, the amount of money lost in the UK was roughly £504 million GBP.

Anti-phishing

There are several different techniques to combat phishing, including legislation and technology created specifically to target phishing. Spam stopping in outlook express can aid a person in fighting phishing as well.

Social responses

One strategy for combating phishing is to train users how to deal with phishing attempts. One newer phishing tactic, which uses phishing emails targeted at a specific company, known as spear phishing, has been harnessed to train users at various places, including West Point Military Academy. In a June 2004 experiment with spear phishing, 80% of 500 West Point cadets who were sent a fake e-mail were tricked into showing personal information.

A user who is telephoned about an account needing to be "verified" could either contact the company that is the subject of the email, or could type in a trusted web address for the company's website into the address bar of their browser, to bypass the link in the suspected phishing message. Many companies, including eBay and PayPal, always address their customers by their username in e-mails, so if an e-mail addresses a user in a generic fashion ("Dear valued eBay member") it is likely to be an attempt at phishing.

Technical responses

Several anti-phishing software programs are available. The programs work by identifying phishing contents on websites and emails; anti-phishing software may be joined with web browsers and email clients as a toolbar that displays the real domain name for the visiting website. Spam filters also help protect users from phishers, because they cut the number of phishing-related emails that users get.

Many organizations have introduced a feature called challenge questions, which ask the user for information that should be known only to the user and the bank. Sites have also added verification tools that allow users to see a secret image (a simple form of two-way authentication) that the user chose in advance; if the image does not appear, then the site is not legitimate. Spam protection for outlook express also uses this technology.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry and law enforcement association, has noted that conventional phishing techniques could become obsolete in the future as people are increasingly aware of the social engineering techniques used by phishers. They propose that pharming and crimeware will become more common tools for stealing information.

Legislative and judicial responses

On January 26, 2004, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) filed the first lawsuit against a suspected phisher. The defendant, a Californian teenager, allegedly created and used a webpage designed to look like the America Online website, so that he could steal credit card numbers. Europe and Brazil have both followed the lead of the U.S. by tracing and arresting phishers. In late March 2005, a 24-year-old Estonian man was arrested for using a Trojan horse, installed after victims visited his fake website, which used a keylogger that next allowed him to watch users' typing. So, authorities later arrested a phishing kingpin, Valdir Paulo de Almeida, for leading one of the largest phishing crime rings, which in 2 years stole between $18 and $37 million USD. UK authorities jailed two men in June 2005 for their role in a phishing scam, in a case connected to the USSS Operation Firewall, which targeted notorious "carder" websites.

In the United States, Democrat Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of 2005 on March 1, 2005. The federal anti-phishing bill proposes that those criminals who create fake web sites and spam bogus e-mails to defraud consumers could get a fine up to $250,000 and get jail terms of up to five years.

Microsoft has also joined the effort to crack down on phishing. On March 31, 2005, Microsoft filed 117 federal lawsuits in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The lawsuits accuse "John Doe" defendants of using various methods to receive passwords and confidential information. Microsoft hope to use these lawsuits to uncover some largest phishing operators. March 2005 also saw Microsoft partner with the Australian government to teach law enforcement officials how to combat various cyber crimes, including phishing.

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