Phishing? For your personal information By Doug W Some of our customers have received e-mail that appear to be from a legitimate source, but were actually sent by imposters. These Spoof e-mail generally ask recipients to verify or update certain information regarding their account in an attempt to commit identity theft. Most often they appear to be from eBay, PayPal, a bank, credit card, or organization that you could have an account with. They ask recipients to verify or update certain information such as their account number, credit card number, Social Security Number, mother's maiden name, bank security codes or other sensitive information. They may state that there has been a charge to the consumer's card or account, and that payment is pending. Some times these e-mail often tell customers that if they fail to update or verify their information, their accounts will be closed. These scams have been around for years, in many forms, but they're growing in volume online. Using social engineering techniques, Phishers defraud their victims by setting up Web sites designed to resemble those run by legitimate companies. Then they lure people to those fake sites via e-mail. The fake Web sites ask victims to "confirm" or enter personal and account information.

Little Bytes Don't open unsolicited e-mail. Delete them!

Instead of relying on victims' gullibility, they are using technological tricks borrowed from crackers and virus writers to exploit software vulnerabilities and plant Trojans on compromised and unpached computers. An example of this approach is an e-mail message that circulated with the purpose of installing a Trojan known as Sepuc. The e-mail has no subject line and no text in the body of the message, code hidden in the e-mail attempts to exploit a known vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer to force a download.

Three Examples of Spoofed emails Phishing for information:

Continued on Page 2

---

-

Page 2