Originally published January 20 2005
Phishing on the rise as Internet criminals discover its lucrative potential
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
An Internet crime-fighting group says that, in November alone, it received 8,459 new reports of phishing attempts. That's four times the number reported in August, and reports have been up 34 percent since August. The new brand of Internet crime is on the rise as hackers increasingly discover how easy, and lucrative, it can be to fool people into dishing out private information to operations that only look legitimate.
Internet crime and security have gotten a lot more complicated in the past year, with phishing and spyware constantly taking on new forms.
Remember scoffing at people who didn't know any better than to click on e-mail attachments from unknown senders, thus exposing their systems to computer viruses?
Boy, has Internet crime and security gotten more complicated in the past year.
For example, as eWEEK.com's Matthew Broersma reported in December, researchers have found that most Web browsers handle pop-up windows in a manner that makes them vulnerable to a simple phishing technique that allows fake content to look genuine.
Over the past year, experts also warned of new attacks that not only circumvent DomainKeys but, adding insult to injury, even exploit the fledgling e-mail signing technology for their nefarious ends.
"It proves that people will get to the point where they can't trust e-mail from anywhere," one security expert, who requested anonymity, told Fisher.
Dave Cullinane, president of the Information Systems Security Association, gave a speech at the CSO Interchange gathering, during which he said that the FBI and other federal agencies are generally unresponsive to requests for help from banks on phishing attacks unless the bank can show substantial financial losses.
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