Originally published July 2 2005
Experts: "Phishers" may smell fear spawned by MasterCard security breach
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
Credit card users were rocked by the world's largest security breach, which resulted in the loss of 40 million Master Card numbers, and Silicon.com is reporting that, because many people still don't know if their credit card was one of the 40 million, fraud solution experts warn that phishers may play on fears by sending official-looking requests asking consumers to enter their information to "reactivate" or "protect" their account.
Email users are being warned to be on the lookout for new social engineering techniques attempting to exploit the widely-publicised theft of up to 40 million credit card account details from a transaction processing firm.
With a great many Discovery, MasterCard and Visa customers likely to be worried about the effect on them of the world's largest card security breach it is likely phishers will try to prey upon their uncertainty.
click here Users may receive emails purporting to come from their credit card company asking them to enter their details and card numbers for the purposes of fraud protection or to reactivate their account.
Often emails may even claim a fraud has been committed and against the backdrop of last week's data breach many users will assume that news is legitimate.
Such scams are nothing new but on the back of such a high profile breach it's likely some phishers will try their hand at such an obvious target, said Peter Dorrington, head of fraud solutions at SAS.
"Social engineering is a common technique," said Dorrington.
Dorrington said any customers who receive any contact via email or telephone purporting to be on official bank business should request a case reference number and then call the number on the back of their bank or card statement to verify it.
Romanian antivirus software vendor BitDefender has said the media attention surrounding the huge data theft may also spawn socially engineered viruses.
BitDefender predicts email users may be directed to spoofed pages where viruses and Trojans could easily be downloaded.
A spokesman for BitDefender said anything that does happen will happen this week as "such attempts must work within the limited attention span imposed by modern media".
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