Posted by Virus Bulletin on Oct 29, 2004
Fewer than five zombie network operators are responsible for all Internet phishing attacks worldwide according to CipherTrust...
According to Commtouch Software the US, UK, Brazil and Romania led the world in sending phishing emails during September 2004. But Brazil may be able to be taken out of the equation for the time being, since Brazilian federal police arrested more than 50 people in connection with phishing scams last month. Reports suggest that the majority of those arrested across four states in northern Brazil were under the age of 25 and involved in creating Trojans for use in phishing scams.
Meanwhile, CipherTrust revealed the findings of its analysis of its customers' email messages last month. The company says it has evidence that fewer than five zombie network operators are responsible for all Internet phishing attacks worldwide. During the first half of October 2004, researchers found that less than one per cent of email messages were phishing attacks. They also discovered that phishing attacks on the Internet were delivered each day via a different set of 1,000 zombie machines, 70 per cent of which were also used to send spam.
Finally, Google fixed a phishing vulnerability in its site last month, just under two days after its discovery by Netcraft - the vulnerability would have allowed attackers to place their own content on Google's site, giving it the appearance of official content published by Google. The vulnerability was located in the application used to search the Google site itself.
Posted on 29 October 2004 by Virus Bulletin
