Phishers Extend Old Ideas to Devise New Tricks for Fooling Online Users

Phishers are dispatching e-mails by spoofing Webmail, the provider of free electronic mail, and admonishing recipients that they must reply with their username, password and name within three days from the receipt of the message, failing which their accounts would be closed permanently, as reported by MONEYWEB on May 29, 2008.

According to Alex Matthews, Spokesman of Panda Security sub-Sahara, the technique is an apparent modification of an old trick. Matthews said that while speaking to the researchers in Panda's laboratory, they described it as an extension of an earlier trend rather than a purely new one. The purpose of the phishers is the same that of mining confidential information to make financial profit, as reported by MONEYWEB on May 29, 2008.

Also, like in past phishing cases, people still believe these e-mails and fall for the tricks used in them, analysts and researchers at Panda Security said.

According to Jeremy Matthews, Head of Panda sub-Sahara, phishers are increasing their targets on online gamers by spreading infection with the 3rd and 5th most used malware in April 2008. These samples of malware are, trojans Lineage.ICL and Lineage.BZE, designed to infect gamers of the 'Lineage' online game, as reported by iTWeb on May 29, 2008.

Aside these, PandaLabs, the laboratory that finds and analyzes malware at Panda Security, during the first two weeks of May 2008, was able to detect a number of free kits for phishing that allow cyber criminals to distribute fake e-mails.

According to news published then, the kits enabled online crooks to spoof Web pages of banking sites and e-mails, Yahoo Mail and Google Mail accounts, online payment sites, blogs for accessing Fotolog credentials and online games to steal Xbox password.

Meanwhile, the most common malware circulating on the internet in South Africa during April 2008 comprised a pair of adware VideoAddon and Netproject, reports Jeremy. Both are crafted to display pop-ups and advertisements on the computer screen when users browse the Web. Jeremy Mtthews further said that as a result, lot of bandwidth is unnecessarily consumed causing too annoying an experience on the Internet.

Related article: Phishers Expand Their Sphere of Attacks

» SPAMfighter News - 6/10/2008