Online Scammers Go Spear-Phishing

Ant wrote to mention an examination at C|NET looking into the increasingly more effective techniques employed by phishers. From the article: "More recently, however, a hybrid form of phishing, dubbed "spear-phishing," has emerged and raised alarms among the digital world's watchdogs. Spear-phishing is a distilled and potentially more potent version of phishing. That's because those behind the schemes bait their hooks for specific victims instead of casting a broad, ill-defined net across cyberspace hoping to catch throngs of unknown victims."

Re:Its the viruses you don't know about...

[Anonymous Coward]

How on Earth do you worry about something you don't know about? Wouldn't this consume all of your time?

C Food

[mysticwhiskey]

From the beginning, life in the C was perilous. Once in the 'net, our shells were vulnerable. They tried to bait us with spam & worms, and while most found those tasteless, some were hooked.

Explicitly casting further with new lures, the phishers trolled, hoping for more bytes on the (on)line. The emails of the species were particularly at risk, as their outlook was not so good to begin with.

Some sought harbour in the eBay, hoping their bet paid off. Last I heard, the feedback was good.

Maybe our only hope is growing legs and migrating to the LAN.

FROM GOVERNMENT SOFTWARE FOUNDATION OF NIGERIA

[n0dalus]

DO NOT WORRY, my GOOD FRIEND.

PHISHING claims many LIVES, but YOU TOO can be SAFE when you use our SECURE SOFTWARE to protect your family from PHISHING. BUT alas, my COMPANY lacks FUNDS to share this SECURE SOFTWARE with GOOD PEOPLE like you. THIS TRAGIC moment for our company can only be FIXED by your kind SERVICES. PLEASE transfer ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS to me at the GOVERNMENT SOFTWARE FOUNDATION OF NIGERIA so we can all SHARE this SECURE SOFTWARE.

ATTACHED is a special TRIAL of this very SECURE SOFTWARE, just for YOU. DO NOT HESITATE to protect yourself from the deadly THREAT of PHISHING.

That does it.

[sticks_us]

I'm calling the "Metaphor and Analogy" police, if there is such a thing.

Why is it that EVERYTHING involving computers and the internets ends up becoming some cutesy-cutesy thing?

What's next?

Employee 1: "You hear about Bob?"

Employee 2: "Yeah, I hear he got spear-phished this weekend. I guess they gutted and scaled him, and supposedly they're going to pan-phry him."

Employee 1: "Well, it beats being served in a tuna salad!"

Employee 2: "What the hell, exactly, are we talking about?"

Drama queen

[bumptehjambox]

Sorry for the 'spoiler,' but what a grand finale at the end of the article.

People don't like it when I say this, but it's like being raped. It's like my underwear was spread all over the streets. It was a severe breach of privacy.

I'd like to be the cop that treats this like they do when they try to tell young girl rape victims its their fault...
Well, look at ya! is that all you put on as a browser?!
Yea, this is just what I usually put on, Internet Explorer.
Well there ya go... You're going out on the internet putting on nothing but a skimpy browser, making all sorts of purchases, without any sort of protection? No wonder you're gettin yourself raped!

Re:Spear-phishing

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an e-mail I got today:

Notice the misspellings.

Dear Amazon member,

Due to concerns we have for the safety and integrity of the Amazon community we have issued this warning.

Per the User Agreement, Section 9, we may immediately issue a warning, temporarily suspend, indefinitely suspend or terminate your membership and refuse to provide our services to you if we believe that your actions may cause financial loss or legal liability for you, our users or us. We may also take these actions if we are unable to verify or authenticate any information you provide to us.

Please follow the link below:

http://www.amazon.com.rbaccess.cn?/exec/obidos [rbaccess.cn]

and update your account information.

We apreciate your support and understanding, as we work together to keep Amazon market a safe place to trade.

Thank you for your attention on this serious matter.

Regards,
Amazon Safety Department

Re:C Food

[MollyB]

Does that make us all Bourne-again Crustaceans?

More marketing words

[OO7david]

I have half a mind to start a company that targets people whose computer freezes from all of the spy/ad/malware by claiming to offer something that will remove it. They, being tired of frozen screens, will give me the info I need.

I'll call it ice phishing.

Spam Fritter

[BarryNorton]

I got spam-frittered the other day - they used the old 'spam, spam, spam, egg, chips and spam' attack, luckily I was phishing on the back of a trojan horse on my pharm - still, I was pretty phreaked. You know what I mean?

Re:bullshit article

[Pollardito]

How about we just drop all the silly cyber-words and start calling it what it is: Fraud.

i prefer the term "Unsmurfy"

"Spear" phishing?

[Entropy]

Spear Phishing? Because it "targets specific people" ?

Okay:

Jelly phishing - targeting politicians.

Salmon phishing - targeting gays.

Flounder phishing - targeting christians.

Tuna phishing - targeting pianists.

Shark phishing - targeting lawyers.

I am sure we could come up with others :)

Re:FROM GOVERNMENT SOFTWARE FOUNDATION OF NIGERIA

[Maradine]

Wait a minute, you're using definite articles, prepositions, and proper plurality! You're not from Nigeria!

Scam! Scam!!

Re:bullshit article

[StopSayingYouSir]

Nah, let's get even less specific and just call it "crime." Or wait! How about maybe just "bad"? While we're at it, let's stop all this silly talk of Fords and Saturns and SUVs and just call 'em all "cars". And we can definitely do without all of the ridiculous kitchen words like "fry" and "roast" and "microwave" and "steam" and "simmer" and just call it what it is: Cooking.

I just call everything "Marklar," to avoid confusion.