'Net Features : phishing

Fight Phishing with Return Path

Amberly Dressler — Thu, 02 May 2013 17:49:00 GMT

The reputational cost to a brand as a result of a phishing attack is approximately $1900 per infected user, according to a Cisco report. Can you afford that?

Return Path, an email intelligence company, recently announced a solution to help brand marketers combat phishing attacks (and save face and money) from all email domains by offering visibility into fraudulent email appearing to originate from a company’s own sending domains. Complementing traditional authentication-based solutions such as DMARC, the new Anti-Phishing Solution provides companies with visibility into the entire spectrum of phishing attacks against their brands, Return Path reports.

“Phishing remains a serious threat to online trust and the reliability of the email channel, and efforts like this from an Anti-Phishing Working Group member company represent important progress toward eradicating it,” said Foy Shiver, Deputy Secretary-General, APWG.

Return Path tells us there are essentially two fronts where phishers wage war: from a brand’s own domain, and so-called “lookalike domains” – close variants of brand names – entirely unrelated to the brands to fool the brand’s customers. Return Path gives this example: These phishers will create a dot com address using a ‘1’ instead of an ‘L,’ which often look similar at first-glance. These non-domain phishing attacks, which are the most prevalent type of attack, pose a serious and significant threat to consumers and the brand’s online equity.

Traditional authentication-based solutions, such as DMARC, offer visibility into fraudulent email appearing to originate from a company’s own sending domains, according to Return Path. However, it is estimated more than half of all phishing attacks actually originate from the “lookalike domains."

“This is a monumental breakthrough in the fight to protect companies and consumers from phishing and other forms of email brand abuse. Our clients have reported that more than half of phishing attacks against their brands appear to come from domains beyond their control. Now brands can detect and mitigate attempts to use their names to deceive consumers through email regardless of where the messages appear to come from,” said Ken Takahashi, general manager of Anti-Phishing Solutions at Return Path. “Phishing is a security problem, but solving it isn’t a conventional security challenge, it’s a big data challenge.”

GlobalSign Alert Service Helps Fight Phishing

Michael Garrity — Wed, 19 Sep 2012 22:00:00 GMT

In order to provide its customers with real-time alerts about their SSL Certificates, which tell them when their websites are compromised and used to support phishing attacks, certification authority GlobalSign has partnered with Internet services provider Netcraft.

The GlobalSign Netcraft Phishing Alert service will first tell GlobalSign when one of its customers’ websites is being used to support phishing attacks, and the company will then immediately notify and advise the customers on remediation steps so they can quickly fix the problem and stop the attack. And, if GlobalSign discovers that a site has specifically created for malicious intent, it will revoke its certificate.

This service, the first of its kind, means customers can maximize their investment in GlobalSign with additional security against these highly prevalent, not to mention persistent, criminal attacks. For a partner, Netcraft was an ideal selection, as it is continually produces an updated phishing feed (one that is currently used by all of the major Web browsers), and it has blocked more than 5 million phishing attacks to date.

Websites are required to have an SSL Certificate to activate the SSL/TLS technology built into a browser or server. Once it’s activated, it will provide an encrypted link between the browser and server to secure transactions or data submission. As SSL trust signals are meant to inspire confidence in users, it can be especially disastrous for consumers and website owners if a site is compromised and used to deploy phishing pages. Luckily for GlobalSign customers, the GlobalSign Netcraft Phishing Alert will significantly reduce their risk of becoming victims of such an attack.

Cloudmark on the Move

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 16:01:00 GMT

Messaging infrastructure and security solution provider CloudMark announced that Web hosting leaders Hostopia and DigiWeb will be using its services.

DigiWeb will be using CloudMark's hosted and managed security solution Cloudfilter to provide spam, phishing and virus protection to over 48,000 web hosting, domain and data center customers across Ireland. The addition of CloudFilter is the first in a proposed suite of cloud-based solutions that Digiweb plans to roll out in 2010. According to the announcement, Digiweb anticipates the demand to be high.

“Spam is a serious issue for hosting providers and their customers, taking up significant time and IT resources,” said Jamie de Guerre, chief technology officer at Cloudmark. “By using our CloudFilter solution, hosting providers such as Digiweb can ensure the security of customers’ email infrastructure, improving the user experience and delivering real peace of mind.”

Hosted email and Web service provider Hostopia will be using Cloudmark Authority™, combined with Cloudmark Sender Intelligence, will be providing its four million email customers the messaging anti-abuse solution.

“At Hostopia, we constantly strive to provide our customers with the highest quality hosted web and email services, and we found that Cloudmark Authority was the clear choice to protect our environment,” said Dirk Baghat, CTO of Hostopia. “While our previous commercial grade technology worked well to combat spam, we wanted to further advance our solution to enhance our messaging infrastructure. With Cloudmark Authority, we can achieve improved performance while delivering the most advanced protection against spam, phishing and virus attacks.”