Phishing

In the field of computer security, phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites (Youtube, Facebook, Myspace), auction sites (eBay), online banks (PayPal), or IT Administrators (Yahoo, ISPs, corporate) are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging, [cite web
author=Tan, Koon
title=Phishing and Spamming via IM (SPIM)
work=Internet Storm Center
url=http://isc.sans.org/diary.php?storyid=1905
accessmonthday=December 5 | accessyear=2006] and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose URL and look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Even when using SSL with strong cryptography for server authentication it is practically difficult to detect that the website is fake. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to fool users [cite web
author=Microsoft Corporation
title=What is social engineering?
url=http://www.microsoft.com/protect/yourself/phishing/engineering.mspx
accessmonthday=August 22 | accessyear=2007] , and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies cite web
author=Jøsang, Audun "et al."
title=Security Usability Principles for Vulnerability Analysis and Risk Assessment.
work=Proceedings of the Annual Computer Security Applications Conference 2007 (ACSAC'07)
accessyear= 2007
url=http://www.unik.no/people/josang/papers/JAGAM2007-ACSAC.pdf] . Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.

A phishing technique was described in detail in 1987, and the first recorded use of the term "phishing" was made in 1996. The term is a variant of "fishing", [cite web
title=Spam Slayer: Do You Speak Spam?
work=PCWorld.com
url=http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,113431-page,1/article.html
accessmonthday=August 16 | accessyear=2006] probably influenced by "phreaking", [cite web
title="phishing, n." OED Online, March 2006, Oxford University Press.
work=Oxford English Dictionary Online
url=http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/30004304/
accessmonthday=August 9 | accessyear=2006] [cite web
title=Phishing
work=Language Log, September 22, 2004
url=http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/001477.html
accessmonthday=August 9 | accessyear=2006] and alludes to baits used to "catch" financial information and passwords.

History and current status of phishing

A phishing technique was described in detail in 1987, in a paper and presentation delivered to the International HP Users Group, Interex. [cite journal | author=Felix, Jerry and Hauck, Chris
title=System Security: A Hacker's Perspective
journal=1987 Interex Proceedings
month=September | year=1987
volume=1
pages=6] The first recorded mention of the term "phishing" is on the alt.online-service.America-online Usenet newsgroup on January 2, 1996, [cite web
title="phish, v." OED Online, March 2006, Oxford University Press.
work=Oxford English Dictionary Online
url=http://dictionary.oed.com/cgi/entry/30004303/
accessmonthday=August 9 | accessyear=2006] although the term may have appeared earlier in the print edition of the hacker magazine "". [cite web | author=Ollmann, Gunter
title=The Phishing Guide: Understanding and Preventing Phishing Attacks
work=Technical Info
url=http://www.technicalinfo.net/papers/Phishing.html
accessmonthday=July 10 | accessyear=2006]

Early phishing on AOL

Phishing on AOL was closely associated with the warez community that exchanged pirated software. After AOL brought in measures in late 1995 to prevent using fake, algorithmically generated credit card numbers to open accounts, AOL crackers resorted to phishing for legitimate accounts. [cite web
title=Phishing
work=Word Spy
url=http://www.wordspy.com/words/phishing.asp
accessmonthday=September 28 | accessyear=2006]

A phisher might pose as an AOL staff member and send an instant message to a potential victim, asking him to reveal his password. [cite news
url=http://wired-vig.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,9932,00.html
last=Stutz
first=Michael
title=AOL: A Cracker's Paradise?
date=January 29, 1998
publisher=Wired News] In order to lure the victim into giving up sensitive information the message might include imperatives like "verify your account" or "confirm billing information". Once the victim had revealed the password, the attacker could access and use the victim's account for fraudulent purposes or spamming. Both phishing and warezing on AOL generally required custom-written programs, such as AOHell. Phishing became 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".

After 1997, AOL's policy enforcement with respect to phishing and warez became stricter and forced pirated software off AOL servers. AOL simultaneously developed a system to promptly deactivate accounts involved in phishing, often before the victims could respond. The shutting down of the warez scene on AOL caused most phishers to leave the service, and many phishers—often young teens—grew out of the habit. [cite web
title=History of AOL Warez
url=http://www.rajuabju.com/warezirc/historyofaolwarez.htm
accessmonthday=September 28 | accessyear=2006]

Transition from AOL to financial institutions

The capture of AOL account information may have led phishers to misuse credit card information, and to the realization that attacks against online payment systems were feasible. The first known direct attempt against a payment system affected E-gold in June 2001, which was followed up by a "post-911 id check" shortly after the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center. [cite web
title=GP4.3 - Growth and Fraud - Case #3 - Phishing
work=Financial Cryptography
url=https://financialcryptography.com/mt/archives/000609.html
date=December 30, 2005] Both were viewed at the time as failures, but can now be seen as early experiments towards more fruitful attacks against mainstream banks. By 2004, phishing was recognized as a fully industrialized part of the economy of crime: specializations emerged on a global scale that provided components for cash, which were assembled into finished attacks. [cite web
title=In 2005, Organized Crime Will Back Phishers
work=IT Management
url=http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/3451501
date=December 23, 2004] [cite web
title=The economy of phishing: A survey of the operations of the phishing market
work=First Monday
url=http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue10_9/abad/
month=September | year=2005]

Recent phishing attempts

Phishers are targeting the customers of banks and online payment services. E-mails, supposedly from the Internal Revenue Service, have been used to glean sensitive data from U.S. taxpayers. [cite web
title=Suspicious e-Mails and Identity Theft
work=Internal Revenue Service
url=http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=155682,00.html
accessmonthday=July 5 | accessyear=2006] While the first such examples were sent indiscriminately in the expectation that some would be received by customers of a given bank or service, recent research has shown that phishers may in principle be able to determine which banks potential victims use, and target bogus e-mails accordingly. [cite news | url=http://www.browser-recon.info/
title=Phishing for Clues
date=September 15, 2005
publisher=Indiana University Bloomington] Targeted versions of phishing have been termed spear phishing. [cite web
title=What is spear phishing?
work=Microsoft Security At Home
url=http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/email/spear_phishing.mspx
accessmonthday=July 10 | accessyear=2006] Several recent phishing attacks have been directed specifically at senior executives and other high profile targets within businesses, and the term whaling has been coined for these kinds of attacks. [cite news | url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/04/16/whaling_expedition_continues/.
last=Goodin
first=Dan
title=Fake subpoenas harpoon 2,100 corporate fat cats
date=April 17, 2008
publisher=The Register]

Social networking sites are a target of phishing, since the personal details in such sites can be used in identity theft; [cite news | url=http://www.pcworld.com/resource/article/0,aid,125956,pg,1,RSS,RSS,00.asp
last=Kirk
first=Jeremy
title=Phishing Scam Takes Aim at MySpace.com
date=June 2, 2006
publisher=IDG Network] in late 2006 a computer worm took over pages on MySpace and altered links to direct surfers to websites designed to steal login details. [cite web
title=Malicious Website / Malicious Code: MySpace XSS QuickTime Worm
work=Websense Security Labs
url=http://www.websense.com/securitylabs/alerts/alert.php?AlertID=708
accessmonthday=December 5 | accessyear=2006] Experiments show a success rate of over 70% for phishing attacks on social networks. [cite web | author=Tom Jagatic and Nathan Johnson and Markus Jakobsson and Filippo Menczer
title=Social Phishing
work=To appear in the CACM (October 2007)
url=http://www.indiana.edu/~phishing/social-network-experiment/phishing-preprint.pdf
accessmonthday=June 3 | accessyear=2006|format=PDF]

Almost half of phishing thefts in 2006 were committed by groups operating through the "Russian Business Network" based in St. Petersburg. [ [http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2007/10/12/ST2007101202661.html?hpid=topnews Shadowy Russian Firm Seen as Conduit for Cybercrime] , by Brian Krebs, Washington post, October 13, 2007]

Phishing techniques

Link manipulation

Most methods of phishing use some form of technical deception designed to make a link in an e-mail (and the spoofed website it leads to) appear to belong to the spoofed organization. Misspelled URLs or the use of subdomains are common tricks used by phishers. In the following example URL, http://www.yourbank.example.com/, it appears as though the URL will take you to the "example" section of the "yourbank" website; actually this URL points to the "yourbank" (i.e. phishing) section of the "example" website. Another common trick is to make the anchor text for a link appear to be valid, when the link actually goes to the phishers' site. The following example link, Genuine, appears to take you to an article entitled "Genuine"; clicking on it will in fact take you to the article entitled "Deception".

An old method of spoofing used links containing the '"@"' symbol, originally intended as a way to include a username and password (contrary to the standard). [cite web | author=Berners-Lee, Tim
title=Uniform Resource Locators (URL)
work=IETF Network Working Group
url=http://www.w3.org/Addressing/rfc1738.txt
accessmonthday=January 28 | accessyear=2006] For example, the link http://[e-mail]/ might deceive a casual observer into believing that it will open a page on www.google.com, whereas it actually directs the browser to a page on members.tripod.com, using a username of www.google.com: the page opens normally, regardless of the username supplied. Such URLs were disabled in Internet Explorer, [cite web
author=Microsoft
title=A security update is available that modifies the default behavior of Internet Explorer for handling user information in HTTP and in HTTPS URLs
work=Microsoft Knowledgebase
url=http://support.microsoft.com/kb/834489
accessmonthday=August 28 | accessyear=2005] while Mozilla Firefox [cite web | author=Fisher, Darin
title=Warn when HTTP URL auth information isn't necessary or when it's provided
work=Bugzilla
url=https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=232567
accessmonthday=August 28 | accessyear=2005] and Opera present a warning message and give the option of continuing to the site or cancelling.

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 [cite web
author=Johanson, Eric
title=The State of Homograph Attacks Rev1.1
work=The Shmoo Group
url=http://www.shmoo.com/idn/homograph.txt
accessmonthday=August 11 | accessyear=2005] or a homograph attack, [cite journal | author=Evgeniy Gabrilovich and Alex Gontmakher
title=The Homograph Attack
journal=Communications of the ACM
month=February | year=2002
volume=45(2)
pages=128
url=http://www.cs.technion.ac.il/~gabr/papers/homograph_full.pdf] no known phishing attacks have yet taken advantage of it. Phishers have taken advantage of a similar risk, using open URL redirectors on the websites of trusted organizations to disguise malicious URLs with a trusted domain. [cite news
url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/08/15/barclays_phish_scam/
last=Leyden
first=John
title=Barclays scripting SNAFU exploited by phishers
date=August 15, 2006
publisher=The Register] [cite web | author=Levine, Jason
title=Goin' phishing with eBay
work=Q Daily News
url=http://q.queso.com/archives/001617
accessmonthday=December 14 | accessyear=2006] [cite news
url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/12/phishing_redirection/
last=Leyden
first=John
title=Cybercrooks lurk in shadows of big-name websites
date=December 12, 2007
publisher=The Register]

Filter evasion

Phishers have used images instead of text to make it harder for anti-phishing filters to detect text commonly used in phishing e-mails. [cite web
author=Mutton, Paul
title=Fraudsters seek to make phishing sites undetectable by content filters
work=Netcraft
url=http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2005/05/12/fraudsters_seek_to_make_phishing_sites_undetectable_by_content_filters.html
accessmonthday=July 10 | accessyear=2006]

Website forgery

Once a victim visits the phishing website the deception is not over. Some phishing scams use JavaScript commands in order to alter the address bar. [cite web
author=Mutton, Paul
title=Phishing Web Site Methods
work=FraudWatch International
url=http://www.fraudwatchinternational.com/phishing-fraud/phishing-web-site-methods/
accessmonthday=December 14 | accessyear=2006] This is done either by placing a picture of a legitimate URL over the address bar, or by closing the original address bar and opening a new one with the legitimate URL. [cite news | url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3608943.stm
title=Phishing con hijacks browser bar
date=April 8, 2004
publisher=BBC News]

An attacker can even use flaws in a trusted website's own scripts against the victim. [cite web
author=Krebs, Brian
title=Flaws in Financial Sites Aid Scammers
work=Security Fix
url=http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/06/flaws_in_financial_sites_aid_s.html
accessmonthday=June 28 | accessyear=2006] 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. Just such a flaw was used in 2006 against PayPal. [cite web | author=Mutton, Paul
title=PayPal Security Flaw allows Identity Theft
work=Netcraft
url=http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/06/16/paypal_security_flaw_allows_identity_theft.html
accessmonthday=June 19 | accessyear=2006]

A Universal Man-in-the-middle Phishing Kit, discovered by RSA Security, provides a simple-to-use interface that allows a phisher to convincingly reproduce websites and capture log-in details entered at the fake site. [cite news
url=http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,2082039,00.asp
last=Hoffman
first=Patrick
title=RSA Catches Financial Phishing Kit
date=January 10, 2007
publisher=eWeek]

To avoid anti-phishing techniques that scan websites for phishing-related text, phishers have begun to use Flash-based websites. These look much like the real website, but hide the text in a multimedia object. [cite web | author=Miller, Rich
title=Phishing Attacks Continue to Grow in Sophistication
work=Netcraft
url=http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2007/01/15/phishing_attacks_continue_to_grow_in_sophistication.html
accessmonthday=December 19 | accessyear=2007]

Phone phishing

Not all phishing attacks require a fake website. Messages that claimed to be from a bank told users to dial a phone number regarding problems with their bank accounts. [cite news
url=http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/186701001
last=Gonsalves
first=Antone
title=Phishers Snare Victims With VoIP
date=April 25, 2006
publisher=Techweb] Once the phone number (owned by the phisher, and provided by a Voice over IP service) was dialed, prompts told users to enter their account numbers and PIN. Vishing (voice phishing) sometimes uses fake caller-ID data to give the appearance that calls come from a trusted organization. [cite news
url=http://www.silicon.com/research/specialreports/voip/0,3800004463,39128854,00.htm
title=Identity thieves take advantage of VoIP
date=March 21, 2005
publisher=Silicon.com]

Phishing examples

PayPal phishing example

In an example PayPal phish (right), spelling mistakes in the e-mail and the presence of an IP address in the link (visible in the tooltip under the yellow box) are both clues that this is a phishing attempt. Another giveaway is the lack of a personal greeting, although the presence of personal details would not be a guarantee of legitimacy. A legitimate Paypal communication will always greet the user with his or her real name, not just with a generic greeting like, "Dear Accountholder." Other signs that the message is a fraud are misspellings of simple words, bad grammar and the threat of consequences such as account suspension if the recipient fails to comply with the message's requests.

Note that many phishing emails will include, as a real email from PayPal would, large warnings about never giving out your password in case of a phishing attack. Warning users of the possibility of phishing attacks, as well as providing links to sites explaining how to avoid or spot such attacks, are part of what makes the phishing email so deceptive. In this example, the phishing email warns the user that emails from PayPal will never ask for sensitive information. True to its word, it instead invites the user to follow a link to "Verify" their account; this will take them to a further phishing "website", engineered to look like PayPal's website, and will "there" ask for their sensitive information.

Damage caused by phishing

The damage caused by phishing ranges from denial of access to e-mail to substantial financial loss. This style of identity theft is becoming more popular, because of the readiness with which unsuspecting people often divulge personal information to phishers, including credit card numbers, social security numbers, and mothers' maiden names. There are also fears that identity thieves can add such information to the knowledge they gain simply by accessing public records. [cite web | author=Virgil Griffith and Markus Jakobsson
title= Messin' with Texas, Deriving Mother's Maiden Names Using Public Records
work=ACNS '05
url=http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/markus/papers/mmn.pdf
accessmonthday=July 7 | accessyear=2006] Once this information is acquired, the phishers may use a person's details to create fake accounts in a victim's name. They can then ruin the victims' credit, or even deny the victims access to their own accounts. [cite news | url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn/A59349-2004Nov18
last=Krebs
first=Brian
title=Phishing Schemes Scar Victims
date=November 18, 2004
publisher=washingtonpost.com]

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 US$929 million. United States businesses lose an estimated US$2 billion per year as their clients become victims. [cite news | url=http://www.csoonline.com/talkback/071905.html
last=Kerstein
first=Paul
title=How Can We Stop Phishing and Pharming Scams?
date=July 19, 2005
publisher=CSO] In 2007 phishing attacks escalated. 3.6 million adults lost US $ 3.2 billion in the 12 months ending in August 2007. [cite news | url=http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=565125
last=McCall
first=Tom
title=Gartner Survey Shows Phishing Attacks Escalated in 2007; More than $3 Billion Lost to These Attacks
date=December 17, 2007
publisher=Gartner] In the United Kingdom losses from web banking fraud—mostly from phishing—almost doubled to £23.2m in 2005, from £12.2m in 2004, [cite news | url=http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=15013
title=UK phishing fraud losses double
date=March 7, 2006
publisher=Finextra] while 1 in 20 computer users claimed to have lost out to phishing in 2005. [cite news | url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/05/03/aol_phishing/
last=Richardson
first=Tim
title=Brits fall prey to phishing
date=May 3, 2005
publisher=The Register]

The stance adopted by the UK banking body APACS is that "customers must also take sensible precautions ... so that they are not vulnerable to the criminal." [cite web | author=Miller, Rich
title=Bank, Customers Spar Over Phishing Losses
work=Netcraft
url=http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/09/13/bank_customers_spar_over_phishing_losses.html
accessmonthday=December 14 | accessyear=2006] Similarly, when the first spate of phishing attacks hit the Irish Republic's banking sector in September 2006, the Bank of Ireland initially refused to cover losses suffered by its customers (and it still insists that its policy is not to do so [ [http://applications.boi.com/updates/Article?PR_ID=1430 Latest News ] ] ), although losses to the tune of €11,300 were made good. [ [http://www.vnunet.com/vnunet/news/2163714/bank-ireland-backtracks Bank of Ireland agrees to phishing refunds – vnunet.com ] ]

Anti-phishing

There are several different techniques to combat phishing, including legislation and technology created specifically to protect against phishing.

ocial responses

One strategy for combating phishing is to train people to recognize phishing attempts, and to deal with them. Education can be effective, especially where training provides direct feedback. [cite web
title=Protecting People from Phishing: The Design and Evaluation of an Embedded Training Email System
work=Technical Report CMU-CyLab-06-017, CyLab, Carnegie Mellon University.
month = November | year = 2006
author = Ponnurangam Kumaraguru, Yong Woo Rhee, Alessandro Acquisti, Lorrie Cranor, Jason Hong and Elizabeth Nunge
url=http://www.cylab.cmu.edu/files/cmucylab06017.pdf
accessmonthday=November 14 | accessyear=2006|format=PDF] One newer phishing tactic, which uses phishing e-mails targeted at a specific company, known as "spear phishing", has been harnessed to train individuals 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 e-mail were tricked into revealing personal information. [cite news | url=http://online.wsj.com/public/article/0,,SB112424042313615131-z_8jLB2WkfcVtgdAWf6LRh733sg_20060817,00.html?mod=blogs
last=Bank
first=David
title='Spear Phishing' Tests Educate People About Online Scams
date=August 17, 2005
publisher=The Wall Street Journal]

People can take steps to avoid phishing attempts by slightly modifying their browsing habits. When contacted about an account needing to be "verified" (or any other topic used by phishers), it is a sensible precaution to contact the company from which the e-mail apparently originates to check that the e-mail is legitimate. Alternatively, the address that the individual knows is the company's genuine website can be typed into the address bar of the browser, rather than trusting any hyperlinks in the suspected phishing message. [cite web
title=Anti-Phishing Tips You Should Not Follow
work=HexView
url=http://www.hexview.com/sdp/node/24
accessmonthday=June 19 | accessyear=2006]

Nearly all legitimate e-mail messages from companies to their customers contain an item of information that is not readily available to phishers. Some companies, for example PayPal, always address their customers by their username in e-mails, so if an e-mail addresses the recipient in a generic fashion ("Dear PayPal customer") it is likely to be an attempt at phishing. [cite web
title=Protect Yourself from Fraudulent Emails
work=PayPal
url=https://www.paypal.com/us/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_vdc-security-spoof-outside
accessmonthday=July 7 | accessyear=2006] E-mails from banks and credit card companies often include partial account numbers.However, recent research [cite web
title=What Instills Trust? A Qualitative Study of Phishing.
author = Markus Jakobsson, Alex Tsow, Ankur Shah, Eli Blevis, Youn-kyung Lim.
work = USEC '06
url=http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/markus/papers/trust_USEC.pdf] has shown that the public do not typically distinguish between the first few digits and the last few digits of an account number—a significant problem since the first few digits are often the same for all clients of a financial institution.People can be trained to have their suspicion aroused if the message does not contain any specific personal information. Phishing attempts in early 2006, however, used personalized information, which makes it unsafe to assume that the presence of personal information alone guarantees that a message is legitimate. [cite news | url=http://isc.incidents.org/diary.php?storyid=1194
last=Zeltser
first=Lenny
title=Phishing Messages May Include Highly-Personalized Information
date=March 17, 2006
publisher=The SANS Institute] Furthermore, another recent study concluded in part that the presence of personal information does not significantly affect the success rate of phishing attacks, [cite web
url=http://www2006.org/programme/item.php?id=3533
title=Designing Ethical Phishing Experiments
author=Markus Jakobsson and Jacob Ratkiewicz
work=WWW '06] which suggests that most people do not pay attention to such details.

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. [cite news | url=http://www.zdnetindia.com/news/features/stories/126569.html
last=Kawamoto
first=Dawn
title=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.
date=August 4, 2005
publisher=ZDNet India] They predict that pharming and other uses of malware will become more common tools for stealing information.

Technical responses

Anti-phishing measures have been implementedas features embedded in browsers,as extensions or toolbars for browsers,and as part of website login procedures.The following are some of the main approaches to the problem.

Helping to identify legitimate sites

Most phishing websites are secure websites, meaning that SSL with strong cryptography is used for server authentication, where the website's URL is used as identifier. The problem is that users often do not know or recognise the URL of the legitimate sites they intend to connect to, so that the authentication becomes meaningless . A condition for meaningful server authentication is to have a server identifier that is meaningful to the user.Simply displaying the domain name for the visited website [cite web | author=Brandt, Andrew
title=Privacy Watch: Protect Yourself With an Antiphishing Toolbar
work=PC World – Privacy Watch
url=http://www.pcworld.com/article/125739-1/article.html
accessmonthday=September 25 | accessyear=2006] as some some anti-phishing toolbars do is not sufficient. A better approach is the petname extension for Firefox which lets users type intheir own labels for websites,so they can later recognize when they have returned to the site.If the site is not recognised, then the software may either warn the user or block the site outright. This represents user-centric identity management of server identities [cite web
author=Jøsangm Audun and Pope, Simon
title=User Centric Identity Management
work=Proceedings of AusCERT 2005
accessyear=2008
url=http://www.unik.no/people/josang/papers/JP2005-AusCERT.pdf] .

Some suggest that a graphical image selected by the user is better than a petname [ [http://www.arraydev.com/commerce/jibc/2005-02/jibc_phishing.HTM "Phishing - What it is and How it Will Eventually be Dealt With"] by Ian Grigg 2005] .

Browsers alerting users to fraudulent websites

Another popular approach to fighting phishingis to maintain a list of known phishing sitesand to check websites against the list.
Microsoft's IE7 browser,
Mozilla Firefox 2.0, and Operaall contain this type of anti-phishing measure. [cite web | author=Franco, Rob
title=Better Website Identification and Extended Validation Certificates in IE7 and Other Browsers
work=IEBlog
url=http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/archive/2005/11/21/495507.aspx
accessmonthday=May 20 | accessyear=2006] [cite web | title=Bon Echo Anti-Phishing
work=Mozilla
url=http://www.mozilla.org/projects/bonecho/anti-phishing/
accessmonthday=June 2 | accessyear=2006] [cite news | url=http://www.3sharp.com/projects/antiphish/index.htm
title=Gone Phishing: Evaluating Anti-Phishing Tools for Windows
date=September 27, 2006
accessdate=2006-10-20
publisher=3Sharp] Firefox 2 uses Google anti-phishing software.Opera 9.1 uses live blacklists from
PhishTank and GeoTrust,as well as live whitelists from GeoTrust.Some implementations of this approachsend the visited URLs to a central service to be checked,which has raised concerns about privacy. [cite web | title=Two Things That Bother Me About Google’s New Firefox Extension
work=Nitesh Dhanjani on O'Reilly ONLamp
url=http://www.oreillynet.com/onlamp/blog/2005/12/two_things_that_bother_me_abou.html
accessmonthday=July 1 | accessyear=2007] According to a report by Mozilla in late 2006, Firefox 2 was found to be more effective than Internet Explorer 7 at detecting fraudulent sites in a study by an independent software testing company. [cite web
title = Firefox 2 Phishing Protection Effectiveness Testing
url = http://www.mozilla.org/security/phishing-test.html
accessmonthday = January 23
accessyear = 2007]

An approach introduced in mid-2006 involves switching to a special DNS service that filters out known phishing domains: this will work with any browser, [cite web
author = Higgins, Kelly Jackson
title = DNS Gets Anti-Phishing Hook
work = Dark Reading
url = http://www.darkreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=99089&WT.svl=news1_1
accessmonthday = October 8 | accessyear = 2006] and is similar in principle to using a hosts file to block web adverts.

To mitigate the problem of phishing sites impersonating a victim site by embedding its images (such as logos), several site owners have altered the images to send a message to the visitor that a site may be fraudulent. The image may be moved to a new filename and the original permanently replaced, or a server can detect that the image was not requested as part of normal browsing, and instead send a warning image. [cite news
last=Krebs
first=Brian
url=http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/08/using_images_to_fight_phishing.html
title=Using Images to Fight Phishing
date=August 31, 2006
publisher=Security Fix] [cite news
last=Seltzer
first=Larry
url=http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1630161,00.asp
title=Spotting Phish and Phighting Back
date=August 2, 2004
publisher=eWeek]

Augmenting password logins

The Bank of America's website [cite web
author = Bank of America
title = How Bank of America SiteKey Works For Online Banking Security
url = http://www.bankofamerica.com/privacy/sitekey/
accessmonthday = January 23
accessyear = 2007] [cite news | url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/07/13/AR2005071302181.html
last=Brubaker
first=Bill
title=Bank of America Personalizes Cyber-Security
date=July 14, 2005
publisher=Washington Post] is one of severalthat ask users to select a personal image,and display this user-selected imagewith any forms that request a password.Users of the bank's online services are instructed to enter a passwordonly when they see the image they selected.However, a recent study suggests few users refrainfrom entering their password when images areabsent. [cite web
last = Stone | first = Brad
title = Study Finds Web Antifraud Measure Ineffective
url = http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/05/technology/05secure.html?ex=1328331600&en=295ec5d0994b0755&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss
publisher = New York Times
accessmonthday = February 5 | accessyear = 2007
date = February 5, 2007] [cite web
author = Stuart Schechter, Rachna Dhamija, Andy Ozment, Ian Fischer
title = The Emperor's New Security Indicators: An evaluation of website authentication and the effect of role playing on usability studies
url = http://www.deas.harvard.edu/~rachna/papers/emperor-security-indicators-bank-sitekey-phishing-study.pdf
work = IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy, May 2007
accessmonthday = February 5 | accessyear = 2007
month = May | year = 2007
format=PDF] In addition, this feature (like other forms of two-factor authentication) is susceptible to other attacks, such as those suffered by Scandinavian bank Nordea in late 2005, [cite news | url=http://www.finextra.com/fullstory.asp?id=14384
title=Phishers target Nordea's one-time password system
date=October 12, 2005
publisher=Finextra] and Citibank in 2006. [cite news
last=Krebs
first=Brian
url=http://blog.washingtonpost.com/securityfix/2006/07/citibank_phish_spoofs_2factor_1.html
title=Citibank Phish Spoofs 2-Factor Authentication
date=July 10, 2006
publisher=Security Fix]

Security skins [cite web
author = Schneier, Bruce
title = Security Skins
work = Schneier on Security
url = http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2005/07/security_skins.html
accessmonthday = December 3 | accessyear = 2006] [cite web
author = Rachna Dhamija, J.D. Tygar
title = The Battle Against Phishing: Dynamic Security Skins
url = http://people.deas.harvard.edu/~rachna/papers/securityskins.pdf
work = Symposium On Usable Privacy and Security (SOUPS) 2005
accessmonthday = February 5 | accessyear = 2007
month = July | year = 2005
format=PDF] are a related techniquethat involves overlaying a user-selected imageonto the login form as a visual cue that the form is legitimate.Unlike the website-based image schemes, however,the image itself is shared only between the user and the browser,and not between the user and the website. The scheme also relies on a mutual authentication protocol, which makes it less vulnerable to attacks that affect user-only authentication schemes.

Eliminating phishing mail

Specialized spam filters can reduce the number of phishing e-mails that reach their addressees' inboxes. These approachesrely on machine learning and natural language processing approaches to classify phishing e-mails. [cite web
work = NYS Cyber Security Symposium
title = Phishing E-mail Detection Based on Structural Properties
author = Madhusudhanan Chandrasekaran, Krishnan Narayanan, Shambhu Upadhyaya
month = March | year = 2006
url = http://www.albany.edu/iasymposium/2006/chandrasekaran.pdf] [cite web
work = Carnegie Mellon University Technical Report CMU-ISRI-06-112
title = Learning to Detect Phishing Emails
author = Ian Fette, Norman Sadeh, Anthony Tomasic
month = June | year = 2006
url = http://reports-archive.adm.cs.cmu.edu/anon/isri2006/CMU-ISRI-06-112.pdf]

Monitoring and takedown

Several companies offer banks and other organizations likely to suffer from phishing scams round-the-clock services to monitor, analyze and assist in shutting down phishing websites. [cite web
title=Anti-Phishing Working Group: Vendor Solutions
work=Anti-Phishing Working Group
url=http://www.antiphishing.org/solutions.html#takedown
accessmonthday=July 6 | accessyear=2006] Individuals can contribute by reporting phishing to both volunteer and industry groups, [cite news | url=http://www.linuxworld.com.au/index.php/id;1075406575;fp;2;fpid;1.
last=McMillan
first=Robert
title=New sites let users find and report phishing
date=March 28, 2006
publisher=LinuxWorld] such as PhishTank. [Cite web |url=http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/10/phishtank.html |title=PhishTank |accessdate=2007-12-07 |last=Schneier |first=Bruce |authorlink=Bruce Schneier |coauthors= |date=2006-10-05 |work=Schneier on Security]

Legal responses

On January 26, 2004, the U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed the first lawsuit against a suspected phisher. The defendant, a Californian teenager, allegedly created a webpage designed to look like the America Online website, and used it to steal credit card information. [cite news | url=http://www.cnn.com/2003/TECH/internet/07/21/phishing.scam/index.html
last=Legon
first=Jeordan
title='Phishing' scams reel in your identity
date=January 26, 2004
publisher=CNN] Other countries have followed this lead by tracing and arresting phishers. A phishing kingpin, Valdir Paulo de Almeida, was arrested in Brazil for leading one of the largest phishing crime rings, which in two years stole between US$18 million and US$37 million. [cite news | url=http://www.channelregister.co.uk/2005/03/21/brazil_phishing_arrest/
last=Leyden
first=John
title=Brazilian cops net 'phishing kingpin'
date=March 21, 2005
publisher=The Register] UK authorities jailed two men in June 2005 for their role in a phishing scam, [cite news | url=http://www.eweek.com/article2/0%2C1895%2C1831960%2C00.asp
last=Roberts
first=Paul
title=UK Phishers Caught, Packed Away
date=June 27, 2005
publisher=eWEEK] in a case connected to the U.S. Secret Service Operation Firewall, which targeted notorious "carder" websites. [cite web | title=Nineteen Individuals Indicted in Internet 'Carding' Conspiracy
url=http://www.cybercrime.gov/mantovaniIndict.htm
accessmonthday=November 20 | accessyear=2005] In 2006 eight people were arrested by Japanese police on suspicion of phishing fraud by creating bogus Yahoo Japan Web sites, netting themselves 100 million yen ($870,000 USD). [cite news
title=8 held over suspected phishing fraud
date=May 31, 2006
publisher=The Daily Yomiuri] The arrests continued in 2006 with the FBI Operation Cardkeeper detaining a gang of sixteen in the U.S. and Europe. [cite web | title=Phishing gang arrested in USA and Eastern Europe after FBI investigation
url=http://www.sophos.com/pressoffice/news/articles/2006/11/phishing-arrests.html
accessmonthday=December 14 | accessyear=2006]

In the United States, Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the "Anti-Phishing Act of 2005" in Congress on March 1, 2005. This bill, if it had been enacted into law, would have subjected criminals who created fake web sites and sent bogus e-mails in order to defraud consumers to fines of up to $250,000 and prison terms of up to five years. [cite news | url=http://informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=60404811
title=Phishers Would Face 5 Years Under New Bill
date=March 2, 2005
publisher=Information Week] The UK strengthened its legal arsenal against phishing with the Fraud Act 2006, [cite web | title=Fraud Act 2006
url=http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/en2006/2006en35.htm
accessmonthday=December 14 | accessyear=2006] which introduces a general offence of fraud that can carry up to a ten year prison sentence, and prohibits the development or possession of phishing kits with intent to commit fraud. [cite news | url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/14/fraud_act_outlaws_phishing/
title=Prison terms for phishing fraudsters
date=November 14, 2006
publisher=The Register]

Companies have 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 obtaining passwords and confidential information. March 2005 also saw a partnership between Microsoft and the Australian government teaching law enforcement officials how to combat various cyber crimes, including phishing. [cite web | title=Microsoft Partners with Australian Law Enforcement Agencies to Combat Cyber Crime
url=http://www.microsoft.com/australia/presspass/news/pressreleases/cybercrime_31_3_05.aspx
accessmonthday=August 24 | accessyear=2005] Microsoft announced a planned further 100 lawsuits outside the U.S. in March 2006, [cite news | url=http://news.zdnet.co.uk/0,39020330,39258528,00.htm
last=Espiner
first=Tom
title=Microsoft launches legal assault on phishers
date=March 20, 2006
publisher=ZDNet] followed by the commencement, as of November 2006, of 129 lawsuits mixing criminal and civil actions. [cite news | url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/11/23/ms_anti-phishing_campaign_update/
last=Leyden
first=John
title=MS reels in a few stray phish
date=November 23, 2006
publisher=The Register] AOL reinforced its efforts against phishing [cite web | title= A History of Leadership - 2006
url=http://corp.aol.com/whoweare/history/2006.shtml] in early 2006 with three lawsuits [cite web | title= AOL Takes Fight Against Identity Theft To Court, Files Lawsuits Against Three Major Phishing Gangs
url=http://media.aoltimewarner.com/media/newmedia/cb_press_view.cfm?release_num=55254535
accessmonthday=March 8 | accessyear=2006] seeking a total of $18 million USD under the 2005 amendments to the Virginia Computer Crimes Act, [cite web | title=HB 2471 Computer Crimes Act; changes in provisions, penalty.
url=http://leg1.state.va.us/cgi-bin/legp504.exe?051+sum+HB2471
accessmonthday=March 8 | accessyear=2006] [cite news | url=http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A40578-2005Apr9.html
last=Brulliard
first=Karin
title=Va. Lawmakers Aim to Hook Cyberscammers
date=April 10, 2005
publisher=Washington Post] and Earthlink has joined in by helping to identify six men subsequently charged with phishing fraud in Connecticut. [cite web | title= Earthlink evidence helps slam the door on phisher site spam ring
url=http://www.earthlink.net/about/press/pr_phishersite/
accessmonthday=December 14 | accessyear=2006]

In January 2007, Jeffrey Brett Goodin of California became the first defendant convicted by a jury under the provisions of the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. He was found guilty of sending thousands of e-mails to America Online users, while posing as AOL's billing department, which prompted customers to submit personal and credit card information. Facing a possible 101 years in prison for the CAN-SPAM violation and ten other counts including wire fraud, the unauthorized use of credit cards, and the misuse of AOL's trademark, he was sentenced to serve 70 months. Goodin had been in custody since failing to appear for an earlier court hearing and began serving his prison term immediately. [cite news | url=http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1895,2085183,00.asp
last=Prince
first=Brian
title=Man Found Guilty of Targeting AOL Customers in Phishing Scam
date=January 18, 2007
publisher=PCMag.com] [cite news | url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/01/17/aol_phishing_fraudster/
last=Leyden
first=John
title=AOL phishing fraudster found guilty
date=January 17, 2007
publisher=The Register] [cite news | url=http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/06/13/aol_fraudster_jailed/
last=Leyden
first=John
title=AOL phisher nets six years' imprisonment
date=June 13, 2007
publisher=The Register] [cite news | url=http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=199903450
last=Gaudin
first=Sharon
title=California Man Gets 6-Year Sentence For Phishing
date=June 12, 2007
publisher=InformationWeek]

ee also

*Anti-phishing software
*Computer insecurity
*Confidence trick
*Dancing pigs
*Defensive computing
*DomainKeys
*E-mail spoofing
*Pharming
*Rock Phish Kit
*Social engineering
*Vishing

References

External links

* [http://www.antiphishing.org Anti-Phishing Working Group]
* [http://www.banksafeonline.org.uk/ Bank Safe Online] – Advice to UK consumers
* [http://www.utica.edu/academic/institutes/cimip/ Center for Identity Management and Information Protection] – Utica College
* [http://www.fbi.gov/cyberinvest/escams.htm E-scams and Warnings Update] – Federal Bureau of Investigation
* [http://atlas.arbor.net/summary/phishing Global Phishing Summary Report] – Real-time database of phishing activity.
* [http://ha.ckers.org/blog/20060609/how-phishing-actually-works/ How the bad guys actually operate] – Ha.ckers.org Application Security Lab
* [http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2005dltr0006.html Plugging the "phishing" hole: legislation versus technology] – "Duke Law & Technology Review"
* [http://www.honeynet.org/papers/phishing/ Know Your Enemy: Phishing] – Honeynet project case study
* [http://www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1745 SecurityFocus] – forensic examination of a phishing attack.
* [http://www.technicalinfo.net/papers/Phishing.html The Phishing Guide: Understanding and Preventing Phishing Attacks] – TechnicalInfo.net