More insecurity

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Bob Frankston <Bob19-0501 () bobf frankston com>
Date: June 22, 2005 2:46:29 PM EDT
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: More insecurity


I just found another letter from Bank of America that I had  
quarantined. I keep a list of sites that require extra security and  
make sure that their mail comes from a site in their domain. This  
isn’t a perfect algorithm but it’s a first order projecting against a  
large percentage of the phishing attacks.



Maintaining my own site I can take measures that I would not tolerate  
if forced upon me. I can also catch exceptions and handle them myself.



In this case the message was a notification that I had changed my  
email address (which is correct) but it came from ms1.par3.com  
(63.251.12.15). Looking back one level I find that it had come from  
ms1.par3.com (10.10.0.125). Makes it hard to verify its authenticity.



Of course Outlook’s “security” isn’t troubled by this – it simply  
believe the “from” address and thus when I say I should trust mail  
from @alert.bankofamerica.com it does nothing to deal with spoofing.



Approaches with a third party security token and encryption are steps  
in the right direction though only early steps that have their own  
issues.



The problem is compounded by AOL and others that don’t allow me to  
send mail from my domain – I must use UNTRUSTED third paties like  
Comcast and RCN instead. For now I go through DynDNS or TZO.



Bob Frankston

http://www.frankston.com





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