SOCIAL PHISHING

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SOCIAL PHISHING Phish a Phriend
Mona Gandhi, Divya Aggarwal
Collaborators Sid Stamm, Markus Jakobsson
Evil doers in Action
Phishing with Beer!!!
Statistics

Experiment Scenario
In excitement, Christy forwarded an email about
the newly launched Carlton Draught beer to her
boyfriend Vince, a business major at
IU. Unsuspecting, Vince clicked on the link and
got redirected to a phishing site
www.verybigad.com, a legitimate cousin site of
www.bigad.com.au. Impressed by the ad, Vince
forwarded it to his network of friends, thus
expanding the phishers net.
Malicious EXE
In the Future...

• Phishers can
• Mount attacks to compromise access
• points, implement rogue captive portals,
• personal information via emails, IM,
• telephones, faxes and IRC
• It will be practiced at all levels
• Students for homework assignments,
• exams
• Journalists for scoops
• Politicians for their election campaigns
• Governments for spying
• Terrorist organizations

Believe it or not!! The attack spread across 3
continents in a span of 5 days affecting 630
people and this is an underestimation since it
did not operate correctly on some versions of IE
are they your true friends?
Fixes

• Client-Side
• Use of anti-virus, firewalls, spyware for
• desktop protection
• Disabling HTML functionality and
• dangerous attachment downloads from
• emails
• Configuring web browsers to disable
• window pop-ups, ActiveX controls, Java
• Runtime
• Server-side
• Educate the user
• Validation and personalization of
• customer communication
• Use of strong passwords for authentication
• Use of developed standards for hosting

Disclaimer
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similarity to any website, living or dead, is
purely intentional. This website is protected
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countries. Unauthorized duplication, distribution
or exhibition may result in civil liability and
criminal prosecution.
Harmless Link
Credits NGS. The Phishing Guide Understanding
and Preventing Phishing Attacks