RE: (not really a) Proposal to anti-phishing

["Scovetta, Michael V" <Michael.Scovetta () ca com>]

> But IMHO, I think that HTML e-mail should be outlawed, period. That 
> alone might go a long way to eliminating a lot of phishing schemes, 
> especially the ones that rely on bugs in the MUA's HTML rendering 
> engine to entice the victims.
I would vote for certain large software corporations to do a better job
in QA before they release their email clients (and maybe filter out some
bad design ideas too). But the point is that HTML e-mail isn't any more
dangerous in and of itself than __important__ or **important**, except
for poorly designed software. Fixing the software is Easy, taking away
something that people like is Hard.

Besides, if HTML was removed from the equation, you'd still have crafy
text email:

        Dear Consumer,
           We here are Bank of America.. blah blah blah.

           We set up a special server for you to validate your account:
                http://www.malware.com/BankOfAmerica

People are easy to fool.


--
Michael Scovetta
Computer Associates
Senior Application Developer

-----Original Message-----
From: Rishi Pande [mailto:rishi.pande () gmail com] 
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2005 3:08 PM
To: Wall, Kevin
Cc: Mike Andrews; webappsec () securityfocus com
Subject: Re: (not really a) Proposal to anti-phishing

I like the quiz but there is no data on participants. My whole point in 
finding who is more susceptible to phishing was to see if perhaps the 
online banking problem would solve itself after some years - as more 
and more young, internet-savvy users start using these services.
As much as I like Kevin's idea, it is difficult to recall something 
that users and corporations like just because of "security". As long as 
the profits from sending better looking emails are higher than the 
losses, corporations will be willing to take it.
Just my $0.02.
Rishi

On Jan 24, 2005, at 2:28 PM, Wall, Kevin wrote:

> Mike Andrews writes...
>
> > I remember doing a quiz on phishing some time ago.  After much
> digging,
> > here's a link to the quiz (version 2)
> >
> > http://survey.mailfrontier.com/survey/quiztest.html
> >
> > Sorry, it doesn't give any results of the survey - perhaps someone
> could
> > email the company and ask about the results, especially which ones
> people
> > didn't get.
>
> Of course, the "quiz" is pretty much useless. There are some obvious
> phishing attempts, but the few that look (are?) legitimate, one can't
> really tell because all they give you is an image, so you can't really
> see what the links are pointing to or do a 'view source', etc.
>
> Of course, the point should be one should ALWAYS go to the the
> web site directly to type in the appropriate URL (if they know
> what it is; otherwise look up their site on a search engine
> and then type it in).
>
> But IMHO, I think that HTML e-mail should be outlawed, period. That
> alone
> might go a long way to eliminating a lot of phishing schemes, 
> especially
> the ones that rely on bugs in the MUA's HTML rendering engine to
entice
> the victims.
>
> -kevin wall