Security Incidents mailing list archives
RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks
From: "Scovetta, Michael V" <Michael.Scovetta () ca com>
Date: Wed, 27 Apr 2005 10:37:10 -0400
Steven, Actually, it's even easier than that. They can simply redirect the user to a junk image when the HTTP "referer" isn't a local site. This of course doesn't prevent users from grabbing a particular image, but I don't think there's a way to have a user viewing site X to automatically send a referer header other than X. Slightly more intensive would be to create sessions when users hit the site the first time, and then check for a valid session when requesting images. I don't think this would slow them down for more than a week or so-- they **could** just copy the images to their site if they wanted to. M -- Michael Scovetta Computer Associates Senior Application Developer -----Original Message----- From: steven () lovebug org [mailto:steven () lovebug org] Sent: Tuesday, April 26, 2005 3:59 PM To: incidents () securityfocus com; bugtraq () securityfocus com Subject: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks 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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Test Your IDS Is your IDS deployed correctly? Find out quickly and easily by testing it with real-world attacks from CORE IMPACT. Go to http://www.securityfocus.com/sponsor/CoreSecurity_focus-ids_040708 to learn more. --------------------------------------------------------------------------
Current thread:
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks, (continued)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks matt.neeley (Apr 26)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks byte_jump (Apr 26)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Michael J. Pomraning (Apr 26)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks byte_jump (Apr 27)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Crispin Cowan (Apr 27)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks thomas adams (Apr 26)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Alex (Apr 27)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks byte_jump (Apr 27)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Thomas Adams (Apr 27)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks byte_jump (Apr 27)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Scovetta, Michael V (Apr 27)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Marco A. Zamora Cunningham (Apr 27)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Krul Thomas (Apr 27)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Calder, James (EXP) (Apr 27)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks webcenter (Apr 28)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Randy (Apr 28)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Nuno Costa (Apr 28)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Dave Greer (Apr 28)
- Re: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Rainer Duffner (Apr 28)
- Message not available
- Administrivia: RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Daniel Hanson (Apr 28)
- Re: Administrivia: RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks Valdis . Kletnieks (Apr 29)
- RE: Discovering and Stopping Phishing/Scam Attacks webcenter (Apr 28)