Saturday, September 3, 2011

Phishing Threats

Computer users receive emails from their bankers or friends asking for updating their personal information by clicking on links provided in the mail.  They take it for granted that these are genuine mails and in good faith click on the links.  The phishers who are organized criminals redirect the users to malicious websites and harvest their personal information. The users ultimately become victims to identity theft, financial frauds and even more serious crimes leading to blackmail, murder, and so on.

Phishing attacks engineered by criminals through the medium of phishing emails ultimately lead to loss of consumer confidence in online transactions that include financial transactions and social interactions through Facebook and other social networking sites.

This is an attempt to survey the phishing threat landscape, to identify the criminal groups and their modus operandi and to understand the impact of phishing on online users.

-Joseph Ponnoly

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