Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Another Record Set for Phishing and it appears Anti-Phishing Measures are being Defeated

Brian Krebs of the Washington Post did an interesting post on his blog about how phishing is increasing (again) and how anti-phishing measures (some recently marketed to users) are failing already.

Brian writes:

The Anti-Phishing Working Group reports that 52 percent more phishing sites were recorded on the Internet than a month earlier and nine times as many as were spotted in October 2005. The steep increase coincides with a massive spike in the volume of spam circulating on the Internet. According to e-mail security firm Postini, 90 percent of all e-mail these days is spam.

Brian's post, here.

Also mentioned is "Rockphishing," which takes advantage of zombie computers formed into botnets. The result is that it is making phishing extremely hard to trace.

Brian did an excellent job in his post - and I highly recommend reading it.

I wrote recently about how technology isn't winning the war against cybercrime. It seems like a lot of expensive anti-phishing software is proving this all over again.

Maybe a better approach would be to follow the money instead? After all - I'm pretty sure that is what the cybercrimals are really after.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh thanks for the comments on my blog, I just took a look at the VA post I did.

http://prying1.blogspot.com/
Pry did a post on 'Snopes on ATM Theft',
He supplied a link to your site.
(not sure if you knew).

"A must visit for those who like to keep their wallet intact."

Thanks so much for what you do!
FTGF!

Anonymous said...

Following the money isn't possible as well. The thing is that there are many of folks offering money laundering services at any fraudsters' forums. Just imagine a lot of people in any poor country, who for a small wage are ready to go and get Western Union transfer, which arrived from US to their name, without asking any questions to guys who hired them...

Ed Dickson said...

The trick is using the smaller fish to get at the bigger ones. Informants and or undercover operatives can accomplish this and it is done in a lot of cases.