Mark Dalby

The UAE has experienced the most phishing attacks against banks in the Arab world in 2010, according to statistics from online anti-fraud company, IT Matrix. Last year, from January to December, IT Matrix detected 1,145 unique phishing attacks, according to Mirza Asrar Baig, CEO of IT Matrix.

Unique attacks mean new attacks from new sources, but do not take into consideration slight variations in the URL. Bahrain comes in second highest for phishing attacks across the Arab world with 154 incidents. The 1,145 attacks in the UAE means there were almost four phishing attacks per day on UAE banks last year.

Saudi Arabia, with the highest number of banks and banking consumers in the Arab world was phished 58 times for the whole year in 2010. According to Baig, four years ago, Saudi Arabia was the highest hit country for phishing attacks in the Arab world and three years ago it was also the highest.
Hack In The Box

The successful use of phishing emails to breach secure organizations like Oak Ridge National Laboratory and RSA are stark reminders of the serious threat posed by what some experts have dismissed as as a low-tech method of attack.

Oak Ridge, a U.S. Department of Energy-run research lab, this week disclosed it had shut down all Internet access and email services after discovering a sophisticated data stealing malware program on its networks.

According to the lab, the breach originated in a phishing email that was sent to about 570 employees. The emails were disguised to appear as notes about benefits changes written by the lab’s HR department. When a handful of employees clicked on the embedded link in the email, a malware program was downloaded onto their computers.
Hack In The Box

Late last week, hackers gained access to millions of names and email addresses by breaching the security of a marketing giant called Epsilon. If that name doesn’t ring a bell (it didn’t for us), the company apparently provides an email marketing service to major financial institutions and retailers — or as Randy Abrams of ESET so eloquently puts it: “Epsilon is the email machine these companies use to generate massive amounts of something that most people call spam.”

Epsilon sends more than 40 billion emails a year for some 2,500 companies including JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, Best Buy, Target, and Walgreens. Although no particularly sensitive data was exposed, such an extensive contact list would be incredibly valuable to cybercriminals. Experts believe the compromised addresses will be targeted in phishing schemes among other frauds and companies affected by the breach have been warning customers to beware of suspicious emails.

In an effort to spread awareness, ESET has published a handy graphical explanation of how phishing attacks work along with pointers on keeping safe. The two biggest tips are: never give out your passwords and don’t log into pages linked directly via email. Being the web-savvy folks you are, we don’t think you’d fall prey to the woeful cries of a “Nigerian prince,” but you probably know someone that would.
Hack In The Box

We all get sick to death of Spam email, I personally tend to switch my personal email address once a year. thankfully though there are groups of people who dedicate their free time to helping us.

One of these groups is “Project Honeypot” and i mention this group specifically as they just stopped their BILLIONTH spam email. and have published quite an in depth report here…

http://www.projecthoneypot.org/1_billionth_spam_message_stats.php

Highlights include…

• Monday is the busiest day of the week for email spam, Saturday is the
  quietest.
• 12:00 (GMT) is the busiest hour of the day for spam, 23:00 (GMT) is the
  quietest
• Malicious bots have increased at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of
  378% since Project Honey Pot started
• Over the last five years, you’d have been 9 times more likely to get a
  phishing message for Chase Bank than Bank of America, however Facebook is
  rapidly becoming the most phished organization online
• Finland has some of the best computer security in the world, China some
  of the worst
• It takes the average spammer 2 and a half weeks from when they first
  harvest your email address to when they send you your first spam message,
  but that’s twice as fast as they were five years ago
• Every time your email address is harvested from a website, you can expect
  to receive more than 850 spam messages
• Spammers take holidays too: spam volumes drop nearly 21% on Christmas Day
  and 32% on New Year’s Day

So on behalf of the entire interweb..

Thanks Guys! Its people like you who make my day that little bit easier.