This week we see a new rise of Twitter phishing and a New MobileMe Phishing Scam Emerges. There’s an alert of phishing calls to cell phones on rise, as well as a phishing Alert for Quickbooks Customers. We wrap it up with the latest Symantec Phishing Report and cautionary advice for the holiday season
Twitter phishing
Christopher Arnold of TCPalm tells the story how TCPalm’s Twitter account got hijacked by phishers and began sending phishing tweets. Once a cyber crook compromises your account, they begin sending phishing direct messages to all your followers, as well as tweeting. If you don’t frequent your account very often, you may be sending hundreds of phishes and not even know it. http://blogs.tcpalm.com/tcpalm_insider/2009/11/twitter-phishing-1.html
A friend of mine was recently compromised and I alerted him via private email to fix the problem. I had begun getting direct messages to pharma sites — totally uncharacteristic for this person.
If you’ve clicked on a link like that, you may be Phishing right now. Check your Direct Messages, and then click on the ‘Sent’ tab to see what you’ve been sending.
If you’ve been phishing here’s what Twitter recommends
New MobileMe Phishing Scam Emerges
Tom Kelchner writing over at the Sunbelt Blog is signaling that a new phisher is on the loose, sending out fake emails to MobileMe subscribers demanding that they update their credit card information, in what looks like a typical phishing scam. This isn’t, by far, the first (and likely not the last) time MobileMe subscribers are targeted by phishers.
MobileMe customers targeted by phishing scam again
Phishing calls to cell phones on rise
Abigail Curtis of the Bangor Daily News warns locals of a new cell phone phishing wave in the local area. It’s a sage reminder that it is happening everywhere.
Abigail writes:
“A rash of ‘phishing’ cell phone calls reported Thursday caused authorities to warn residents against sharing personal finance information over the phone. We encourage everyone to be alert, and think twice, and if in doubt, don’t give out any information. You can always contact your local bank at their usual number.”
Phishing Alert for Quickbooks Customers
Anita Mathis at the Atlanta Business Technology Examiner writes:
On November12 Intuit issued a phishing alert for Quickbooks customers. The alert applies to Quickbooks and Quickbooks Online users. Individuals receiving an email asking customers to download a plug-in should immediately delete it.
Symantec Phishing Report
Cautionary advice for holiday season
Symantec’s Phishing Report for the month of Nov. 2009 shows that there is an increase of 17% moreover there is a cautionary advice that users must beware for phishers and spammers as this is the high time when they send new attacks via emails, social networking sites and online forums.
The report says,“There was a considerable increase observed in the number of phishing sites being generated using phishing toolkits. The recent downtrend of phishing attacks, in all likelihood, is seen to have been discontinued with the resurgence in toolkit attacks in October, and signals the approach of the holiday season.”
Symantec observed 45 percent increase in non-english phishing sites. The company also found that 30 percent of phishing URLs were generated using phishing toolkits; an increase of 24 percent from the previous month.
http://www.symantec.com/norton/security_response/index.jsp?src=symsug_us
