OSU’s Students & Staff Targeted by Phishers

Federal Trade Commission (FTC) revealed that in a recent e-mail scam, illicit phishing e-mails, giving the illusion of legitimate university e-mails, are circulating among Ohio State faculty, staff and students.

It is further reported that the scammers are likely to post an e-mail or a pop-up message, claiming to be coming from an organization or a business that deals with the recipient on regular basis.

Moreover, the security agency, investigating the current phishing attack targeted on the Ohio University, highlighted the fact that this fake message may urge the recipients to 'validate', 'update' or 'confirm' their account info.

The scam designers make attempts to dodge the users and victims to steal their passwords or other similar critical details. The mails used in such scams purports to come from some legitimate source, like Ohio State University (OSU) in this particular case.

The spoofed e-mail asked the recipients to log-on to a fake website to catch the current news and information about OSU and directed users to the virtual webmail page of the university. As soon as the page is logged-on, the victims were directed to Ohio State Newark web page. This page is utilized to archive the passwords and usernames of the visitors that can be sold to the criminals.

Information Security Outreach Specialist, Shawn Sines, stated that it won't be possible to secure the students just by making the information regarding OSU password protected. Any modifications regarding the university are posted at osu.edu that always remains open for the general public as they are not even required to key-in their passwords to access any data, reported THE LANTERN on November 18, 2008.

It is notable that such phishing attacks launched with the motive of obtaining the personal details of OSU staff members and students are not new. As per the reports, several similar phishing scams have appeared at the university's campus from the commencement of 2008. These e-mails seem to be pouring-in from the Office of Information Technology.

As an initiative to stop this attack, OSU urged its staff and students to instantly bring any sort of unidentified e-mail, purportedly from OSU, to the notice of the university.

» SPAMfighter News - 01-12-2008

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