June 2, 2008
Linked in but clued out
If you thought it’s only the uninitiated who falls for phishing scams, think again. LinkedIn, a networking site for intellectuals who want to do more mature stuff than listen to 50 Cent and upload photos of themselves binge-drinking, is now a target for phishers.
The modus operandi is not exactly a giant leap in e-sophistication; a fraudster pretends to have millions of dollars and wants to deposit it in an account. Yours, to be precise. But hand over the information and prepare to see your own personal funds vanish in to thin air.
(Link)
Graham Cluley of Sophos PLC said:
"Now they're trying their scam with a network used by business people. By using this mechanism, the criminals know they're talking to people who aren't 13-year-olds, but people with money in their pockets."
The story here is that social networking sites are becoming the new target of choice for criminals trying to fraud and cheat their way to the top. Websites like MySpace, Facebook and LinkedIn are increasingly used by Internet users for day-to-day interaction and the perception is that they are far safer to use than email. This perception is wrong.
David Senf of IDC Canada explains:
"Promiscuous users are accepting friend and network requests from people they don't even know. The trouble is that no one wants to be rude."
Seriously, folks, be rude.
Yahoo! to sue unknown phishers from parts unknown
In a slightly-bizarre story, Yahoo! are (yes, my word processor did capitalise “are”) suing unknown defendants for using the Yahoo! trademark in a lottery scam. The phishers email individuals telling them that they have been successful in a lottery sponsored by Yahoo! and must send personal information back to claim their prize.
(Link)
Despite not knowing who or where these people are, Yahoo! has decided to sue them.
John Kremer, VP of Yahoo! Mail said:
“We are going after individuals who have attempted to negatively impact the e-mail experience for consumers across the Internet. Through our continued litigation efforts, our top goal and priority is to further protect Yahoo! Mail users and the public from this type of fraudulent activity.”
Filing a lawsuit against unknown people reeks more of a publicity stunt than anything else and interestingly comes only a few weeks after MySpace successfully sued Sanford Wallace and Walter Rines for $234m – even if it is money they will probably never see.
DKIM grows wings
In more Yahoo!-related news, the California-based company announced that adoption of its email authentication standard, Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM) is picking up pace.
The technology, which our Brandmail solution is based on, has been adopted by major Internet companies like eBay and Paypal, and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation wants financial institutions to be using it by the end of the year. (Link)
In a rather vague statement, the Yahoo! Mail group product manager Mark Risher said:
"We're seeing adoption rise on a weekly basis.”
Yahoo! is working with companies to help them adopt the technology and a new standard from the Internet Engineering Task Force called Sender Signature Process lays out how organisations should adopt Domain Keys.
These are interesting times and a great opportunity for security companies like Brandmail to make giant strides in the battle against spam and phishing.
As the Gates close…
I spotted this story on the excellent Guardian site where John Naughton effectively reviews a new movie that could be called The Age of Irony starring Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer (interesting to note that Microsoft Word does not put a dirty, toothy red line under “Ballmer”).
With Gates about to stand down from his day-to-day job at Microsoft, Naughton observes just how middle-aged and out-of-touch his software company have become from their recent outing at the Wall Street Journal-backed D6 “All Things Digital” conference last week.
(Link)
When asked if Microsoft’s pretty but over-bearing operating system, Vista, was a mistake, Gates replied:
"We have a culture that's very much about ‘We need to do better’. Vista's given us more opportunities to exercise our culture”
I’m not even sure I know what that means.
When asked about Google’s dominance of search, Gates threw out this doozie:
“Guys like us avoid monopolies. We like to compete.”
The article goes on to discuss the emergence of the excellent Mozilla Firefox (interesting to note that Microsoft Word does put a dirty, toothy red line under those last two words) browser and takes a shot at the closed-shop, anti-open source attitude that means we won’t see the Mozilla foundation represented there next year.
In the meantime enjoy this Bill Gates tribute from the David Letterman show.
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