untangling_the_web

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companies, notably Skype, allow customers to pick both their area code and prefix,
which means a call can appear to be coming from a very specific entity, such as
your bank. The simple solution for customers is not to respond either to automatic
emails (aka spam or phishing scams) or to automatic phone messages asking you to
call a number. If you are in doubt about the legitimacy of any email or phone call, call
your bank or credit card company at their main number and ask if there is a problem
with your account. Good rule of thumb: Initiate, do not respond.
How Not to Get Hooked by a "Phishing" Scam
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/alerts/alt127.htm
The Anti-Phishing Working Group
Phishtank (known and suspected phishing sites)
http://www.antiphishing.org/
http://www.phishtank.com/
PayPal's Protect Yourself from Fraudulent Emails
https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=xptlgeneral/SecuritySpoof-outside
Protect Yourself from "Pharming" Attacks
Not content with trying to lure victims to fraudulent websites using phony links in
email messages, malicious users have devised an even more insidious trick to
redirect users to fake websites. These scams have been dubbed pharming,194 and
the potential for the trouble they could cause is just becoming apparent. Basically, a
pharming attack involves redirecting web users from a legitimate site by any number
of dirty tricks. Usually the attacker exploits a browser vulnerability, such as what has
been happening since late 2004 when the security company Secunia began
identifying vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer, Opera, all the Mozilla-based browsers,
and a number of other browsers that permit an attacker to inject content into a
legitimate website, for example, by inserting the attacker's content into a popup at
someone else's website. All these attacks are described as "spoofing" attacks, i.e.,
fooling users into believing they are at a legitimate website when in fact they are at a
fake or spoofed site instead. Secunia provides details of these many vulnerabilities
and demonstrations of whether your browser is vulnerable at its website.
Secunia's Advisories: Dialog Origin Vulnerability Test
http://secunia.com/multiple browsers dialog origin vulnerability test!
It gets worse. In January 2005 a pharming attack successfully diverted all email and
web traffic from the New York ISP Panix. According to a statement from Panix, "The
194 This term may create confusion because there is already a use of the neologism pharming, i.e.,
"The production of pharmaceuticals from genetically altered plants or animals."
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