Six people, five men and one woman, have been arrested for their parts in a huge phishing ring. UK authorities say that the group has so far stolen over $550,000 and compromised over 20,000 credit card and bank accounts but say the tab could potentially reach over $6 million once they are able to establish the full extent of the operation. The five were arrested in London and County Meath, Ireland by the Metropolitan Police as part of an investigation called Operation Dynamophone.

          “We have taken this action to shut down an organised criminal network running an online phishing and account take-over operation,” said the Met’s Detective Inspector Colin Wetherill.”A great deal of personal information was compromised and cleverly exploited for substantial profit. By disrupting the operation we have hopefully prevented further loss to individuals and institutions across the UK.”

The group sent out fake emails made to look like they came from legit banking institutions in an attempt to trick them into going to the lookalike sites they created and turning over their login info. Once the info was in their hands they went to town cleaning out bank accounts and maxing out credit cards. Detective superintendent Charlie McMurdie of the Police Central eCrime Unit (PCeU) said they are also trying to determine if the gang distributed malware as part of their operation.

          “In high-volume phishing, malware infection goes on,” said McMurdie. “One million emails through various channels and in various forms will get a certain percentage of response.”

The accused remain in custody in London on suspicion of conspiracy to commit online banking fraud and violations of the Computer Misuse Act.

A doctor at the UC San Francisco School of Medicine fell for a phishing scam and turned over his log in credentials to hackers, exposing the personal information of over 600 patients. Demographic and clinical information on the patients, and in some cases, social security numbers, was compromised. The doctor got an email that was made to look like it had come from the UCSF I.T. department and believed it.

The breach occurred in September but was not announced until after the investigation had been completed. It’s not the first time UCSF has been involved in a situation concerning compromised data. In 2007 the personal information of over 6,000 patients was made available on the net for months before it was discovered. The affected patients were infuriated when they realized UCSF waited 6 months to tell them because it wanted to complete its investigation first. UCSF responded by saying they were working to improve their security practices but apparently haven’t done so.

The doctor’s name isn’t being revealed and the patients affected have been notified. UCSF said it has “re-educated” staff members on the importance of security and protecting their user names and passwords.

Twitter users were hit with a spam attack over the weekend. It started with a simple question: “Want to know who’s stalking you on twitter!?” and a link to TwitViewer, a site that claimed it would show them the last 200 people that visited their Twitter profile. The problem was that TwitViewer demanded their Twitter username and password in order to do so.

Those that did so had their Twitter account promptly spam everyone they are following with the same question and link, and if they happened to click on any of the people in the gallery of thumbnails the site claims are people that visited their profile (but they didn’t-there is no way for a site to be able to collect that kind of information), their account automatically followed them-and of course spammed them with the TwitViewer link. All in all a very slick phishing scheme. Continue reading Twitter Users Hit By Malicious TwitViewer Spam»

A 23 year old Romanian immigrant from Michigan has been sentenced to 8 and a half years in prison for his role in a phishing scam that left over 7,000 victims and raked in over $700,000. Starting in June 2000, when he was 14 years old and lasting through February 2007, Sergiu Popa used two email accounts to send out phishing emails made to look like legit messages from such companies as Citibank and Paypal. Unwitting victims who clicked on the links were sent to the fake websites he set up and had their personal info stolen. He pleaded guilty to the charges in hopes of getting a lenient sentence, but the plan backfired

 

“Because there were so many victims who were hurt badly, the court believes the sentence is appropriate in order to protect the public,” said Judge John Tunheim. “There needs to be a deterrent to others who are trying similar crimes over the Internet.”

One file found in his Yahoo email account contained credit card information for over 5,000 people. Upon searching his home, the FBI found blank plastic cards being used to make fake credit cards and driver’s licenses, a machine used to print graphics on such cards, and foil ribbons used to stamp the holographs used on legit cards. Continue reading Phisher Sentenced to Eight Years in Prison»

I recently joined a few email administrator discussion groups on LinkedIn.  I was surpirsed to see how many administrators are currently in a job search.  Although you may already know how to identify email phishing scams, it’s easy to get so caught up in the pressure which may derail our focus.

With the global economic meltdown, millions of people are out of work.  The stress is enormous. Marriages are dissolving, because  love jumps out the back window when money stops coming through the front door.  CNN even reports that many failed marrages can’t be completely dissolved, because couples can’t even afford to go their separate ways.  Tensions escalate as some couples are forced to stay together because they can’t sell property.  This is very fertile ground for email spam phishing scams to reap huge profits.

The phishing sharks are circling the rough water of a highly competitive job market. This volatile emotional climate sets the  stage for people to make very irrational decisions. People in a job search are vulnerable and easy prey for phishing scams. Bank accounts are being emptied due to people allowing their emotions to override making practical business decisions.    It’s  easy for anyone to get lathered up with email scams promising a job opportunity or making fast cash working at home in, but a cool head and common sense must prevail. I can  personally attest there are legitimate work at home opportunities.  When I’m not providing technology support to email clients, I provide business career coaching services.  My wife also runs a very successful Internet eComerce business. Continue reading Use Common Sense During a Job Search»

Phishing has reached epidemic proportions. According to a Gartner study 3.6 million people in the US lost money to phishing scams in 2007, up from 2.3 million in 2006. The only bright point in the study was that more people were able to recover more of their losses in 2007 than in previous years. That may be great for consumers, but it’s not so great for the businesses which are having to reimburse customers and deal with remediations.

And there’s no sign that the phish are becoming slower. During the first half of 2008, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) identified attacks against 47,324 brands and identities on 155 TLDs (see Global Phishing Survey: Domain Name Use and Trends 1H2008 for details). It certainly seems that phishing is a problem for which there is no easy solution.

Continue reading The Phish Keep On Coming»

A new type of phishing scam that uses Google’s Calendar service is making the rounds. The scam first appeared last summer, and has reappeared last week, according to reports.

The phish appears as a Google Calendar email notification, and it appears to be identical to a standard Google Calendar invitation to an event. The phish has a bit more credibility than most, because the data thief actually uses a real Gmail account, and the recipient is addressed by their real name, and it is a legitimate, genuine Calendar invitation to an event. When the recipient clicks on the invitation, they are taken to the phisher’s real Gmail Calendar.

Continue reading Beware of Google Calendar phishing scam»

Apple’s popular MobileMe service, which offers Mac and iPhone users webhosting, a personal email address, file sharing, and online data synchronization between their devices, has been hit with a phishing scam. Users received an email that looked like it came from Apple with the following message:

         “We were unable to process your most recent payment. Did you recently change your bank, phone number or credit card?”

The email then prompts the user to click on a link to update their info. The link is actually fake, and leads to a site owned by a Gmail user in Romania. The site steals the personal information of anyone who falls for the ruse and enters it into the phony Apple page.

This is the second time this year that phishers have targeted Apple. In May a similar email was sent to users of the immensely popular iTunes service. Security experts believe that phishers are aiming these attacks at Apple services to take advantage of Apple’s reputation of being more secure than Windows. They are banking on Apple users thinking such attacks could never happen to them and as a result not being wary of such emails. It appears that Apple users are not getting a rather rude wake up call. To scammers, no OS is off limits.