Phishers Aim Attack on BigPond Customers

A phishing scam aiming at users of the largest ISP of Australia, Telstra BigPond has been found advising people towards validating their billing details alternatively find their accounts suspended. Naked Security reported this on December 14, 2011.

Representing a standard form of spam, the phishing e-mail scam, according to Sophos the security company, however, is likely to acquire a timely grip considering that BigPond users are vulnerable because their customer details possibly got compromised that summoned for a confirmation.

Moreover, with an appealing caption: "ADSL Service Cancellation Notice," the phishing message supposedly is being sent from "Telstra Billing <info@online.telstra.com.au."

It states that the e-mail is from Telstra BigPond being sent to the recipient for informing him about possible suspension of its service for him. The reasons consist of a change in the user's billing address; incorrect details submitted at the time of bill-payment from the user's end; expiry of his debit or credit card; or non-updating of the user's BigPond profile.

Furthermore, Sophos states that on December 9, 2011, many consumers' personal information was taken down off a Telstra customer website that wasn't secured, thus compelling Telstra to deactivate its web-mail and other services during the weekend.

Head of Technology Paul Ducklin at Sophos analyzed that the hoax electronic mail established a connection with a user interactive WordPress website supported on the domain name, .com.au. Essentially, as the domain name didn't allow arbitrary registrations, there was a good accurate regulation of its part of the Australian hierarchy of domain names, with the names inclined for instilling a trust and reliability feeling, Ducklin observed. Naked Security reported this.

Ducklin further observed that within the particular incident, the phishers used the WordPress' un-patched edition for "borrowing" the Aussie blog website's service. The e-mail was clearly one phishing message as BigPond never serviced e-mails that directed for making instant admission into users' accounts via following a given web-link. Besides, there were plentiful grammatical, spelling and orthographic errors in the e-mail, the expert added.

Telstra thus urged all subscribers through Twitter that those who'd been affected should reset their passwords for avoiding possible privacy breach.

Related article: Phishers Expand Their Sphere of Attacks

» SPAMfighter News - 12/27/2011