Most people have heard about phishing – the practice of using fraudulent emails to gain access to personal information for the purpose of identity theft. But like any activity, an occasional update in the process is needed. Spear phishing is the new black in identity theft.
The term phishing was coined because of the way that criminals try to gain access to personal information – basically, they cast out a bunch of bait in the form of fraudulent emails, and wait to see who bites. Spear phishing, however, is more targeted.
Just a fisherman would use a spear to target a single fish, spear phishing targets individuals. Whereas criminals might send a single, mass e-mail to a couple hundred thousand people in a phishing attack, spear phishing attacks are customized and sent to a single person at a time.
The spear phishing email usually contains personal information such as a name or some tidbit about employment. The
07 Oct
Posted by: Admin in: Identity Theft Articles
The phishing attacks last week on Hotmail were actually compromising Microsoft Live ID accounts. These credentials give a user access to multiple services including Hotmail, Messenger, Xbox Live, Office Online and Skydrive, and Bing.
What this shows is that a single phished email username and password could result in a user’s business data being compromised, their backed up documents or business documents being exposed, and their search results visible. Financial losses could also occur if an Xbox Live account were compromised.
There have been many efforts to push forward with broader federated identity systems such as OpenID and Liberty Alliance. You can start to see the dangers inherent with such systems if passwords can easily be phished.
The more that these systems get federated, the more crucial it is going to be for them to support, or even require, strong two-factor authentication in addition to usernames and passwords. A