WebApp Sec mailing list archives

Re: Article - A solution to phishing


From: Jimi Thompson <jimi.thompson () gmail com>
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 2004 22:10:57 -0600

I would think that this would redirect the "phishing" to try to get
people to give up access to their email accounts instead.  In
addition, it's ridiculously easy to sniff email.

2 cents,

Jimi


On Tue, 30 Nov 2004 14:57:20 +1100, Michael Silk <michaelsilk () gmail com> wrote:
(sorry to double-post ...)

Dave,

You suggest that the solution is to verify email addresses.

How often do you actually _look_ at the adress, however ? How often
would a user ?

Most, if not all, mail clients will just display the name of the
person we are communicating ... i.e. this will come from "Michael
Silk" but is actually a different account then the one I used to post
the original webappsec message. How many people noticed? Probably
no-one.

The point is that you don't need to spoof the _address_ (domain) to
trick users, you only need to spoof the _display name_ that appears.

-- Michael



-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Jevans [mailto:djevans () teros com]
Sent: Tuesday, 30 November 2004 6:35 AM
To: Mark Burnett; webappsec () securityfocus com
Subject: RE: Article - A solution to phishing

Email authentication to prevent spoofing of email addresses will solve
85% of phishing attacks in their current form.  At the Anti-Phishing
Working Group we recommend a two-step adoption of SenderID/SPF and
then email signing (most likely with Yahoo's Domain Keys or an IIM
derivative).  See more about this at
http://truste.org/about/authentication.php

Mark, you point out that authenticating a website to a consumer is
necessary.  www.passmarksecurity.com has an interesting image-based
approach that requires no software or hardware on the end user
machine.

There are also a lot of things that can be done on the application
security side to detect and reduce phishing.  These include:
- preventing cross-site scripting
- detecting load spikes
- preventing image referrals
- detecting NDN bounce floods
- detecting account takeovers
- detecting phishing site testing prior to attack launch
- application forensics

Dave

Night job: Chairman, Anti-Phishing Working Group.  www.antiphishing.org
Day job:   Sr. VP, Teros.  www.teros.com



-- 
Thanks,

Jimi


Current thread: