Emerging trends
in Email Phishing Scams
MillerSmiles.co.uk, the online Spoof Email & Phishing
Scam report and monitoring service reports worrying new trends in the latest
email scams.
These scams aim to steal recipients' personal and financial details in what is
known as Phishing. Phishing is a term used to describe the action of assuming
the identity of a legitimate organisation, or web site, using forged email and/or
web pages and with a view to convince consumers to share their user names, passwords
and personal financial information for the purpose of using it to commit fraud.
This is also and often referred to as Identity Theft.
Following Microsoft's patch of its Internet Explorer products to plug the bug
which allowed code to open a forged page while showing the genuine URL in the
address bar (URL Spoofing or Cloaking), we are seeing new methods to trick unsuspecting
surfers into interacting with the spoof emails and forged web pages�
We are seeing spoof emails that contain quite complex JavaScript commands to
force the email program to display genuine URLs in the status bar while the cursor
'hovers' over the link to the bogus web page. Spoof emails are usually written
in HTML which also allows links to be written with genuine looking 'descriptive'
text � email
recipients should be aware that if they see a link in an HTML message, it is
no indication that the link leads to the description at all, you just have to
think about the �click
here' links that you see in many web pages. The manipulation of status bar messages
just bolsters the genuine feel and for those who rely on what they see in that
status bar message and on the email page, this could spell lots of trouble.
The other worrying trend lies in the fraudsters' continued attempts to serve
up forged web page content in a way that leads the viewer to think it is genuine. �We
are seeing more and more instances of script commands that will initially send
your browser to a page with no content, but just a script which triggers the
opening of two new pages (one in the existing window and another in a new one).
Of the two pages, the first will be one of the genuine site's pages and the second
is opened with address, tool and status bars coded out (removed) and contains
the forged content.� This
gives the viewer the impression that the second browser window is a pop up which
is directly related to the first window, when in actual fact it is the mechanism
used to grab users' information by way of a forged web form to complete.
Recent examples of this kind of set up include the recent MBNA Bank Email Scam
(http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/identitytheft/022304-MBNA-phishing-scam.php) � a
recent eBay Phishing Scam (http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/identitytheft/022304-ebay-phishing-scam.php) � a
Paypal Phishing Scam (http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/identitytheft/022204-paypal-1.php) � and
Citibank (http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/identitytheft/022104-citibank.php).
See www.MillerSmiles.co.uk for more on Spoof Email Phishing Scams and tap into
the daily email scam news feed through http://www.millersmiles.co.uk/millersmiles.xml
Mat Bright
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