Heading in the opposite direction

Just one day before April 1st 2006 I came across this article :



"German retail banker Postbank will begin using electronic signatures on e-mails to its customers to help protect them from phishing attacks."



Catching up with the phishers seems to be a very worrisome future strategy. Electronic Signatures by themselves are rarely checked by anyone, and many more attack vectors are making the idea of this totally irrelevant. Moreover, a great research "Why phishing works" was recently released and it basically outlines basic facts such as how end users doesn't pay attention to security checks, if there's a definition of such given the attack vectors phishers have started using recently. In some of my previous posts "Security threats to consider when doing E-Banking", and "Anti Phishing toolbars - can you trust them?" I mentioned many other problems related to this bigger than it seems problem, what you should also keep an eye on is the good old ATM scam I hope you are aware of.



Postbank is often targeted by phishers, still, the best protection is the level of security awareness stated in here :



"Phishing attacks have led 80% of Germans to distrust banking related e-mails, according to TNS Infratest." Moreover, "Postbank's electronic signature service isn't possible with web-based e-mail services provided by local Internet service providers such as GMX GmbH and Freenet.de AG, according to Ebert. One exception is Web.de"



Thankfully, but that's when you are going in exactly the opposite direction than your customers are, while trying to estalibish reputable bank2customer relationship over email. Listen your customers first, and follow the trends, and do not try to use the most popular dissemination vector as a future communication one.



Something else in respect to recent phishing statistics is the key summary points of the recently released, AntiPhishingGroup's Report for January, 2006 report :



• Number of unique phishing reports received in January: 17,877
• Number of unique phishing sites received in January: 9715
• Number of brands hijacked by phishing campaigns in January: 101
• Number of brands comprising the top 80% of phishing campaigns in January: 6
• Country hosting the most phishing websites in January: United States
• Contain some form of target name in URL: 45 %
• No hostname just IP address: 30 %
• Percentage of sites not using port 80: 8 %
• Average time online for site: 5.0 days
• Longest time online for site: 31 days



I feel there's a lot more to expect than trying to re-establish the communication over a broken channel, as far as E-banking is concerned.



More resources you might be interested in taking a look at are :
Vulnerability of First-Generation Digital Certificates and Potential for Phishing Attacks
Netcraft: More than 450 Phishing Attacks Used SSL in 2005
SSL's Credibility as Phishing Defense Is Tested
Rootkit Pharming
The future of Phishing
Something is Phishy here...
Phishing Site Using Valid SSL Certificates
Thoughts on Using SSL/TLS Certificates as the Solution to Phishing



Technotati tags:
Security, Phishing, Scam, Banking Continue reading →

Anti Phishing toolbars - can you trust them?

A lot of recent phishing events occured, and what should be mentioned is their constant ambitions towards increasing the number of trust points between end users and the mirror version of the original site. The use of SSL and the ease of obtaining a valid certificate for to-be fraudelent domain is a faily simple practice. Phishing is so much more than this, and it even has to do with buying 0day vulnerabilities to keep itself competitive.


How should phishing be fought? Educating the end user not to trust that he/she's on Amazon.com, when he just typed it, or enforcing a technological solution to the problem of digital social engineering and trust building? As far as trends are concerned, according to the AntiPhishingGroup's latest report :



• Number of unique phishing reports received in December: 15244
• Number of unique phishing sites received in December: 7197
• Number of brands hijacked by phishing campaigns in December: 121
• Number of brands comprising the top 80% of phishing campaigns in December: 7
• Country hosting the most phishing websites in December: United States
• Contain some form of target name in URL: 51 %
• No hostname just IP address: 32 %
• Percentage of sites not using port 80: 7 %
• Average time online for site: 5.3 days
• Longest time online for site: 31 days


In case you haven't came across to this research "Do Security Toolbars Actually Prevent Phishing Attacks?" you'll find that it has very good points and actual evidence. Antiphishing filters and toolbars protection are gaining popularity, and many popular companies are fighting for market share of the end users'


desktop, but keep in mind that :



"We conducted two user studies of three security toolbars and other browser security indicators and found them all ineffective at preventing phishing attacks. Even though subjects were asked to pay attention to the toolbar, many failed to look at it; others disregarded or explained away the toolbars’ warnings if the content of web pages looked legitimate. We found that many subjects do not understand phishing attacks or realize how sophisticated such attacks can be."



The topic of phishing and fighting the problem has been again greatly extended by the researcher Min Xu, while writing the thesis "Fighting Phishing at the User Interface" and introducing a solution that measures a site's reputation and trustfulness. While, this is among the simplest ways Google uses to while assigning PageRank's, I find this a common sense warning. Still, with the constant flood of Web 2.0 companies, does it matter? :) Check out some screenshots from this outstanding thesis, and get the point :


Localizing the attacks, taking advantage of the momentum, or a software vulnerability within a popular browser or site itself, as well as taking advantage of malware, are among the most common practices these days. Moreover, I feel that fighting phishing the wrong way could erode the end user's trust in the Web on the other hand, so do your homework on the social impact on anything you do. NetCraft's Anti Phishing toolbar, whatsoever, is my favorite combination of them all, still, awareness and lack of naivety when it comes to transactions or authentication is the perfect tool, what about yours?



Some resources worth mentioning are :

Candid's “Phishing in the middle of the stream” Today’s threats to online banking
Know your Enemy : Phishing
Phishing attacks and countermeasures
The Phishing Guide
Distributed Phishing Attacks
Phishiest Countries
MailFrontier Phishing IQ Test
Online Identity Theft: Phishing Technology, Chokepoints and Countermeasures



Technorati tags :
Security, Phishing, Toolbar, AntiPhishing Group Continue reading →