SkiifGeek's Journal: A Phishing Evolution

While many of us encounter traditional spamming and phishing on a daily basis in our inboxes, and the growing annoyance of comment spam / messaging spam on blogs, forums and other interactive sites, not many of us will have experienced the high quality identity fraud that is being used to develop and implement phishing / scams on professional networking sites. The Register has recently run an article on one such scam, which was identified and shut down last week.

Originally identified by a Sûnnet Beskerming researcher, a report into the incident has been created and placed online (direct pdf link). While the end scam was a typical 419-type scam, it is believed that the methods used to initiate communication, build trust, and seed the scam have not previously been seen in the wild (and then successfully identified as a scam).

A clued in user with a decent level of IT experience will probably be able to identify the scam before they get fleeced. The big risk is for the many users we are responsible for who will not be able to identify the scam once the scammer has gained their trust, particularly the business operators and managers with access to significant wealth.