A combination of sheer coincidence and a phishing scam
masquerading as an e-mail from eBay made Simon Moores very
suspicious.
I was almost convinced, caught or conned, and it took a
call to the head of security at eBay to confirm that the e-mail I
had received was part of a much larger phishing scam, which was out
to catch my credit card details and those of a million
others.
Now, I’m not unfamiliar with phishing, after all, I write about
e-crime regularly. However, on this occasion I had been editing my
account details inside eBay, when an e-mail arrived with the
message: “Unfortunately, eBay has not been able to authorise your
credit/debit card. Your credit/debit card information must be
updated on your eBay account immediately.”
As I have only just registered on eBay and had bought my first
items the previous week the request that I visit
http://www.ebaydbs.com and “Use this secure form to update your
credit/debit card information on your eBay account”, had, I thought
been triggered by my updating my account preferences.
But hold on a moment. What is ebaydbs.com? It certainly looks
like eBay, but alarm bells started ringing in my head, so I picked
up the phone and called my contact at the company.
“eBay never sends out messages of this kind asking for a
customer’s account details," he told me. "It’s a coincidence that
you happened to be doing what you were doing when the mail arrived.
Have a look at the header," he suggested.
I did, and the e-mail return path goes
a.kadir@teos.isikun.edu.tr and so, unless eBay hosts its server in
Turkey, there’s something wrong. Of course, the website resolves to
a totally different address as well and exploits a well-known
weakness in Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but that doesn’t help
those who have parted with their credit card details. If this
almost caught me, then it’s likely that a great many others may
well discover some unexpected transactions on their Visa statements
next month.
Such phishing expeditions are a regular fact of life now for banks
and for popular auction sites like eBay, caught in an arms race
with criminals who are becoming increasingly sophisticated in the
way in which they exploit gaps in the technology to deceive the
individual.
Fighting back once again, eBay has just launched a downloadable
toolbar on eBay.com which will glow red if you visit a dummy eBay
site and this is expected to be available in the UK very soon.
At the same time, large institutions, such as the banks are
casting around for a foolproof method of assuring customers that
what looks like the entry screen on a bank’s web page is actually
the real thing. In a world of perfect digital copies, that isn’t
always so easy.
Information theft is now the fastest growing fraud. If you haven’t
bought a personal shredder, then get one now. Be deeply suspicious
of any and every e-mail you receive that asks you for any detail of
your life.
It’s not just the British government who wants to know
everything about you. The criminals out there do too.
What do you think?
Have you been caught out by the phishers?
Tell us in an e-mail >>
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Setting the world to rights with the collected thoughts and
opinions of leading industry analyst Dr Simon Moores of
Zentelligence.
Acting globally, Zentelligence (Research) advises
governments, suppliers, business and the media on the evolution,
application and delivery of leading-edge technologies and
specialises in the areas of eGovernment and information
security.
For further information on Zentelligence and its research,
presentation and analyst services visitwww.zentelligence.com