Phishing Emails Decline
Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. If the recipients click on a link in a phishing e-mail, they land on a rogue Web site that captures their passwords, account numbers or any other information they might enter.
A report being released Wednesday by IBM Corp. shows a big drop in the volume of “phishing” e-mails. The slower growth may be a sign that anti-virus and anti-spyware software is beginning to stem the tide of attacks, or simply that phishing has lost its novelty and that recipients are becoming desensitized to the attacks, said Peter Cassidy, secretary general of the APWG.
Experts belive that these online criminals may be working on other techniques to steal your information and warn that phishing email increase around the holidays. Another technique being used by these criminals is trojan horse programs, which are used to spy on victims and are even capable of crashing victim’s computer.
Trojan horses are designed to allow a hacker remote access to a target computer system. Once a Trojan horse has been installed on a target computer system it is possible for a hacker to access it remotely and perform operations. The operations that a hacker can perform are limited by user privileges on the target computer system and the design of the Trojan horse itself.
Operations which could be performed by a hacker on a target computer system include:
* Use of the machine as part of a Botnet (e.g. to perform Distributed Denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks)
* Data Theft (e.g. passwords, security codes, credit card information)
* Installation of software (including other malware)
* Downloading of files
* Uploading of files
* Deletion of files
* Modification of files
* Keystroke logging
* Viewing the user’s screen
To protect your self from these threats it is recommended that you update your ativirus, spyware and firewall programs.