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; when opened the attachments launched a virus which hunts for specific classified documents and send them to the bad guys.
Like all phishing schemes, this one appealed to the recipients’ desires, fears and curiosity to get the recipients to act. What can you do to protect yourself? How can you know if an email is real?
Know who. No doubt. Use eMail ID.