RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks

["Thomas Adams" <tgadams () bellsouth net>]

The problem comes in making changes to production servers during production.
Most people don't want to take the chance of doing that. Not too mention
high targeted companies receive hundreds of attacks a day. There is your
headache waiting to happen. 
Just go with what is already set up. Referrer logs are easy to turn on(may
be default on most webservers now). Very easy to watch them and you are
definitely in a proactive stance by doing so.
The phishers change just as fast as you can change your server. For
instance, we just setup a new layout for our webserver. A few hours later,
we noticed new updated phishing kits to reflect our changes.

Thomas Adams, CISSP

-----Original Message-----
From: byte_jump [mailto:bytejump () gmail com] 
Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 6:56 PM
To: thomas adams
Cc: incidents () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks

It's really not that bad to change images or refer to a different
image, or even add an image. If you are tracking referrers to special
files such as images (there are others too, depending on your site)
the fraudster will have to host the images himself in order to avoide
being detected. Once he does that, he gives the legitimate site the
ability to take proactive action such as adding images to the site,
changing them, etc., though that doesn't buy a whole lot unless you
can get the word out to your customers.

byte_jump

On 27 Apr 2005 04:42:14 -0000, thomas adams <tgadams () bellsouth net> wrote:
> In-Reply-To: <1312.128.173.146.141.1114545545.spork () webmail lovebug org>
>
> I have actually worked with another guy in coding a small app that will
watch the referrer logs. If the referrer is not in a list of 'known
referrers' an email will be sent to the admin. This actually helps in
spotting phishing sites fairly early, because we can see the site being
made. Doesnt catch them all, but you can bet if they use this method we will
see them.
> Changing the images could get to be a massive headache.
> I think the referrer method is much easier than what you are suggesting.
>
> Thomas Adams, CISSP
>
> > As we have all noticed, there has increase in the number of phishing/scam
> > attempts via e-mail that appear to be legitimate.  Most of
> > these e-mails look identical to e-mails that would be sent by the
> > e-commerce or banking institute.  They also frequently link to
> > fraudulent/hacked webservers that also appear very similar to the website
> > they are masquerading as.
> >
> > I noticed quite some time ago is that most of these websites
> > and e-mails do not host their own images.  From what I have seen, more
> > often than not, these e-mails and websites link directly to images hosted
> > by the legitimate website.  For example, I just received an eBay scam
> > asking me to signup to be a PowerSeller.  The PowerSeller artwork, logos,
> > and other images are all linked directly from eBay.  So this makes me
> > realize that there are a few things some of these targeted
> > websites/businesses can do to detect these scam sites much quicker.  I
> > have made this suggestion to a few banking institutions in the past, and
I
> > have no idea if anyone has actually decided to implement my ideas or not
> > -- but they seem pretty feasible.
> >
> > Since they are linking to the images hosted on the site they are cloning
> > -- the banking/e-commerce website could just rename their images on
> > their own webpage every so often (and update their webpages accordingly).
> > However, at the same time they should keep copies of the images with
their
> > old names.  Now they can check their logs to see what webpage(s) are
> > accessing these old image names.  Chances are they will link directly
back
> > to the hacked website purporting to be their page.  This would allow for
> > quicker detection of this phishing and scam websites, providing a slight
> > leg up for sites trying to fight this.
> >
> > Just an idea -- let me know if anyone has any comments.
> >
> > Steven
> > steven () lovebug org
>
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