Don’t Forget About Phishing Posted  October 12, 2009 By Sarah Fender

While there are many sophisticated attacks threatening banking and financial services today, there are some timeless standard ones as well. Just last week, a co-worker was targeted by an old fashioned phishing attack. Here’s what happened:

She receives a text message:

From: No Caller ID
Date: 10/8/09 3:04pm
This is an automated message from Central Bank of Kansas City. Your ATM card has been suspended. To reactivate call urgent at 18662652744.

She was suspicious, so she Google’d the bank. She clicked on the link to their website.

Looks reasonably legit even if the url is a little weird.

So, she dials the 800 number in the text message. Here’s the phone call:

scam_audio.wav

Luckily, she was savvy enough not to enter her real credit card number, but you can bet some people did.

According to an recent article on ComputerWorld.com, “After a small dip last year, phishing activity has picked up again and is rapidly climbing back to record levels in terms of unique phishing sites and targets.” While the attack described above was after credit card numbers, there have been a number of high profile phishing attacks this year targeting user names and passwords for social media sites like Facebook and Twitter not to mention the ongoing barrage of attacks against online banking.

It’s a good reminder to keep an eye on the emerging threat landscape, but to not forget the old standards.

~Sarah~