On April Fools’ Day, early reports circulated that Epsilon, the large email service company, had lost email addresses of many of its prominent customers.  This turns out NOT to be an April Fools’ joke – the names and email addresses used by Epsilon’s customers had, in fact, been compromised.  Reuters reports that email lists used by CitiBank, Walgreens and Best Buy had all been compromised.  In fact, as reported by SecurityWeek, dozens of brands were impacted, including JPMorgan Chase, US Bank, Target, Home Shopping Network, The College Board, and Marriott Rewards. How could this happen?  Epsilon was the victim of a [...]

It is tax time again in the USA.  And that is the time for fake emails that pretend to be from the IRS.  In its recent Tax Tip 2011-58, the IRS advised: Identity Theft: It pays to be choosy when it comes to disclosing personal information. Identity thieves have used stolen personal data to access financial accounts, run up charges on credit cards and apply for new loans. The IRS is aware of several identity theft scams involving taxes or scammers posing as the IRS itself. The IRS does not use e-mail to contact taxpayers about issues related to their [...]

You may remember reports of a spies infiltrating U.S. government computers using phishing email pretending to be from President Obama.  The U.S. is not alone in suffering from these high-tech espionage methods. Reports out of Canada tell of another carefully crafted phishing scheme which compromised Canadian government computers.  The attack, which appeared to originate from China, involved the hackers posing as senior bureaucrats sending email to technical staffers.  The technical staffers were fooled into giving the fake officials key passwords, thereby allowing unauthorized network access.  At the same time, the bad guys sent other staffers emails with seemingly innocuous attachments; [...]

Today, IID released its Q4 2010 eCrime Trends Report.  According to IID, phishing increased in Q4 2010 increased 14% over Q4 2009.  Of particular note was the increase of phishing in the gaming sector – phishing increased 489%!  IID suggests that the high value of virtual gaming goods which are controlled by consumers makes the phishing of gamers particularly lucrative for cybercriminals.  This is IID’s breakdown of phishing attacks by target industry:   The IID report discussed the launch of the “Stop. Think. Connect.” public awareness campaign of the National Cyber Security Alliance (NCSA) in partnership with the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).  [...]

Goodmail Systems has announced that it is ceasing operations.  Goodmail provides an email deliverability solution that also has an email marking component. Their business offers a three-part solution – An accreditation service in which the email sender is certified by Goodmail using standards determined by Goodmail, with agreement by email services such as AOL and Yahoo! that accredited email will be delivered. An authentication mechanism to verify that messages from Goodmail customers are legitimate.  Inbox marking in which messages from Goodmail customers are identified with a Goodmail mark in the inbox. The fundamental value provided by Goodmail is the first step in this process [...]

appriver's blog reports a phishing scam which pretends to be a McDonald's survey.  The fake McDonald's email offers the recipient a $250 reward for answering five questions.   This is very similar to the recent scam pretending to be a Coke survey.  The scam starts with this email: This email takes the victim to what appears to be a real survey: "Next" takes the victim to the phishing page -- where the identity is stolen: After completing the fake survey, the victim is taken to the real McDonald's website, thereby reducing suspicion.  A similar scam is being conducted against McDonald's in [...]