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Phishing
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Phishing
This phishing attempt, disguised as an official email from a (fictional) bank,
attempts to trick the bank's members into giving away their account information
by "confirming" it at the phisher's linked website.In
computing,
phishing is a form of criminal activity using
social engineering techniques, characterized by attempts to fraudulently acquire
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.
With the growing number of reported phishing incidents, additional methods of
protection are needed. Attempts include
legislation, user training, and technical measures.
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 (an example of the younger hacker's
propensity to veil information by intentionally misspelling words, i.e., 'krak').
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 required. Because AOL eventually brought in measures in late 1995
to prevent this, 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 reveal his or her
password[1]. In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information
the message might include text such as "verify your account" or "confirm billing
information". Once the victim had submitted 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 required
custom-written programs, such as the colorfully named AOHell.
In 1997, AOL's policy enforcement with respect to phishing and warez became
stricter and forced pirated software off AOL servers. Around the same time
phishing was so prevalent on AOL that they added a line on all instant messages
stating: "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, 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[2].
E-mails supposedly from the
Internal Revenue Service have also been used to glean sensitive data from
U.S. taxpayers. In general such targeted versions of phishing have been termed
spear phishing.
Phishing examples
PayPal phishing example
An
example of a phishing email targeted at PayPal users.
In an example
PayPal phish (right), spelling mistakes in the email ("no choise
but to temporaly suspend your account"), and the presence of an
IP address
in the link visible in the
tooltip under
the yellow box ("Click here to verify your account") are both clues that
this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway, as mentioned elsewhere in this
article, is the lack of a personalized greeting. "Dear Customer" or some such
indicates a mass mailing, though a personal greeting is not a guarantee of
legitimacy either.
SouthTrust Bank example
In this second example, targeted at
SouthTrust
Bank users, the phisher has used an image to make it harder for anti-phishing
scanners to detect by scanning for text commonly used in phishing emails.
From: SouthTrust <support_id_99583160@southtrust.com>
To: xxxxxx@yyyyy.com.br
Subject: SouthTrust Bank: Important Notification
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2005 23:56:30 -0200 (22:56 BRT)
-
An image from a phish targeted at SouthTrust bank customers.
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. 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 method of
spoofing links used web addresses containing the @ symbol, which were
used to include a username and password in a web URL (contrary to the standard[3]).
For example, the link http://www.google.com@members.tripod.com/ might
deceive a casual observer into believing that the link will open a page on
www.google.com, whereas the link actually directs the browser to a page on
members.tripod.com, using a username of www.google.com; were
there no such user, the page would open normally. This method has since been
closed off in the
Mozilla[4]
and
Internet Explorer[5]
web browsers, while
Opera provides a warning message and the option not to follow the link.
Some phishing scams use javascript commands in order to alter the address
bar. This is done either by placing a picture of the legitimate entity's URL
over the address bar, or by closing the original address bar and opening a new
one containing the legitimate URL.
In another popular method of phishing, an attacker uses a bank or service's
own scripts against the victim. These types of attacks (known as Cross Site
Scripting) are particularly problematic, because they direct the user to sign in
at their bank or service's own web page, where everything from the web address
to the security certificates appears correct. In reality, the link to the website
is crafted to carry out the 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[6]
or a homograph attack[7],
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
substantial financial loss. 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.
It is estimated that between May 2004 and May 2005, approximately 1.2 million
computer users in the
United States suffered losses caused by phishing, totaling approximately $929
million USD. U.S. businesses lose an estimated $2 billion USD a year as their
clients become victims.[8]
The United Kingdom also suffers from the immense increase in phishing. In March
2005, the amount of money lost in the UK was approximately £12 million GBP.[9]
Anti-phishing
There are several different techniques to combat phishing, including
legislation and technology created specifically to target phishing.
Social responses
One strategy for combating phishing is to train users 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 locations, including
West Point Military Academy. In a June 2004 experiment with spear phishing,
80% of 500 West Point cadets who were sent a fake email were tricked into
revealing personal information.[10]
Users who are contacted about an account needing to be "verified" can take
steps to avoid phishing attempts, by contacting the company that is the subject
of the email to check that the email is legitimate, or by typing 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 emails, so if an email addresses a
user in a generic fashion ("Dear valued eBay member") it is likely to be
an attempt at phishing.
The
Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry and law enforcement association,
has suggested that conventional phishing techniques could become obsolete in the
future as people are increasingly aware of the social engineering techniques
used by phishers.[11]
They propose that pharming and other uses of malware will become more common tools for stealing information.
Technical responses
Anti-phishing software is available that may identify phishing contents on
websites, act as a toolbar that displays the real domain name for the visited
website, or spot phishing attempts in email.
Spam
filters also help protect users from phishers, because they reduce the
number of phishing-related emails that users receive.
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 that the user selected in advance; if the image does not appear, then the
site is not legitimate[12].
This (and other forms of two-way authentication and two-factor authentication) are still susceptible to attack, such as that
suffered by Scandinavian bank
Nordea in late
2005[13].
Several companies offer banks and other entities likely to suffer from
phishing scams 24/7 services to monitor, analyze and assist in shutting down
phishing websites.
Microsoft's new IE7 browser includes anti-phishing technology.
Legal 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[14].
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 backdoor, installed after victims visited his fake website, which
included a keylogger
that allowed him to monitor users' typing
[15]. Likewise, 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
[16]. UK authorities jailed two men in June 2005 for their role
in a phishing scam
[17], in a case connected to the
USSS
Operation Firewall, which targeted notorious "carder" websites
[18].
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 criminals who create fake web sites and
spam
bogus emails in order to
defraud
consumers could receive a fine up to $250,000 and receive jail terms of up to
five years.[19]
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 obtain passwords and confidential information.
Microsoft hopes to use these lawsuits to uncover some of the 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.[20]
AOL reinforced its
efforts against phishing[21]
in early 2006 with three lawsuits[22]
seeking a total of $18 million USD under the 2005 amendments to the Virginia
Computer Crimes Act[23][24].
References
-
↑ Stutz, Michael, "AOL:
A Cracker's Paradise?", Wired News, January 29, 1998.
-
↑ "Phishing
for Clues", Indiana University Bloomington, September 15, 2005.
-
↑ Berners-Lee,
Tim.
Uniform Resource Locators (URL). IETF Network Working Group. URL
accessed on January 28, 2006.
-
↑ Fisher,
Darin.
Warn when HTTP URL auth information isn't necessary or when it's provided.
Bugzilla. URL accessed on August 28, 2005.
-
↑ Microsoft.
A security update is available that modifies the default behavior of
Internet Explorer for handling user information in HTTP and in HTTPS URLs.
Microsoft Knowledgebase. URL accessed on August 28,
2005.
-
↑ Evgeniy
Gabrilovich and Alex Gontmakher (February 2002).
"The Homograph Attack". Communications of the ACM 45(2):
128.
-
↑ Johanson,
Eric.
The State of Homograph Attacks Rev1.1. The Shmoo Group. URL
accessed on August 11, 2005.
-
↑ Kerstein, Paul, "How
Can We Stop Phishing and Pharming Scams?", CSO, July 19, 2005.
-
↑ Richardson, Tim, "Brits
fall prey to phishing", The Register, May 3, 2005.
-
↑ Bank, David, "'Spear
Phishing' Tests Educate People About Online Scams", The Wall Street
Journal, August 17, 2005.
-
↑ "Security:
Bank to Require More Than Passwords", CNN, July 14, 2005.
-
↑ "Phishers
target Nordea's one-time password system", Finextra, 12/10/2005.
-
↑ Kawamoto, Dawn, "Faced
with a rise in so-called pharming and crimeware attacks, the Anti-Phishing
Working Group will expand its charter to include these emerging threats.",
ZDNet India, August 4, 2005.
-
↑ Legon, Jeordan, "'Phishing'
scams reel in your identity", CNN, January 26, 2004.
-
↑ Leyden, John, "Trojan
phishing suspect hauled in", The Register, April 4, 2005.
-
↑ Leyden, John, "Brazilian
cops net 'phishing kingpin'", The Register, March 21, 2005.
-
↑ "UK
Phishers Caught, Packed Away", eWEEK, June 27, 2005.
-
↑
Nineteen Individuals Indicted in Internet 'Carding' Conspiracy. URL
accessed on
November 20, 2005.
-
↑ "Phishers
Would Face 5 Years Under New Bill", Information Week, March 2,
2005.
-
↑
Microsoft Partners with Australian Law Enforcement Agencies to Combat Cyber
Crime. URL accessed on
August 24, 2005.
-
↑
Overview of AOL anti-phishing activities. URL accessed on
March 08, 2006.
-
↑
AOL Takes Fight Against Identity Theft To Court, Files Lawsuits Against
Three Major Phishing Gangs. URL accessed on
March 08, 2006.
-
↑
HB 2471 Computer Crimes Act; changes in provisions, penalty.. URL
accessed on March 08, 2006.
-
↑ "Va.
Lawmakers Aim to Hook Cyberscammers", Washington Post, April 10,
2005.
External links
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This guide is licensed under the GNU
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