Customer Reviews

Phishing: Cutting the Identity Theft Line

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Phishing is the scourge of the internet right now. Rachael Lininger and Russell Dean Vines have done a pretty good job in helping individuals and companies understand the problem with their book Phishing - Cutting The Identity Theft Line (Wiley).

Chapter List: Phishing for Phun and Profit; Bait and Switch: Phishing Emails; False Fronts: Phishing Websites; Are You Owned: Understanding Phishing Spyware; Gloom and Doom: You Can't Stop Phishing Completely; Helping Your Organization Avoid Phishing; Fighting Back: How Your Organization Can Respond To Attack; Avoiding the Hook: Consumer Education; Help! I'm a Phish! Consumer Response; Glossary of Phishing-Related Terms; Useful Websites; Identity Theft Affidavit; Index

It used to be I'd see one or two "requests" a week to update my personal information for places like eBay or Citibank. Now it's closer to two or three a day. I'm well aware that these phishing attempts are scams meant to commit identity theft, but apparently we internet-savvy people are in the minority. Lininger and Vines have written a very readable and understandable guide to phishing that can easily be given to nearly anyone to help them protect themselves. The uninitiated will quickly grasp the idea that they shouldn't be responding to emails like these, and as a result they'll be much safer. People who are internet-savvy will learn the tricks that are used by the phishers to make links appear to be something other than what they truly are. Even organizations can benefit from the chapters on what they should do if they find that their servers have been co-opted to run a phishing scam.

Very practical material with the benefit of being a book that's fun to read. This is information that needs to be in the hands of all internet users these days...

I was browsing through computer security oriented books recently (May 2005) at a large national book chain. I went through the indexes in the back of the books to see how often or not the category "Phishing" was referenced. It was very few.

I then stumbled across this book. It is very informative to those who are only vaguely familiar with this big scam. The authors even provide sample text and code that phishers have regularly used. As noted in the book, in the earlier days, the phishers often used poorly constructed English in their spam, but the scam has grown in its own sophistication. The authors provide also very clear terminology in regards to this scam, such as the difference between the terms: phish, vs. phishing vs. phishing sites vs. phishing email. They also provide help to those who have fallen for the phishing scams. The authors give the reader step by step instructions on how to go to the police to file a report and to report the issue to the ISP.

The authors are very correct, this problem of phishing is only going to grow larger as a problem online despite making more people aware of it and the unknown backend battle against it by the ISPs. Luckily magazines like Readers' Digest and Newsweek have had occasional articles on phishing. I can only hope spreading more of such awareness minimizes more attacks against unsuspecting users online who are defrauded.

I work in a field where I attempt to minimize phishing scams. I found that such attacks have seemed to increase over the past year. A good starter site for such information is: <a href="http://antiphishing.org">antiphishing.org</a> the Anti-Phishing Working Group's website. The phishers typically attack by compromising webservers with outdated OSes and/ or setting up fraudulent hosting accounts with stolen credit cards.

In my own forensic research from time to time with phishing scams on infected webservers, that often the culprits setting up the phishing sites are originating from IPs in foreign countries, notably North Africa and Eastern Europe. The only draw back to this book I can think of is I wish the book had more information pulled from ISPs themselves who fight this serious scam.

The authors claim this book is for a wide range of people from network administrators type people to any one who wants to learn about phishing. Though there is a lot of information in this book, most of it will be common knowledge to people who are employed to keeps networks secure. This books would be great for some one who has been scammed, if you can overlook the flakey writing. For instance, instead of Congressmen they refer to them as "Congresscritters". It was annoying and difficult to keep much of the authors' information seriously. If you can ignore this, you will learn a lot about phishing scams, what to avoid, and how to recover from one.

"Phishing - Cutting the Identity Theft Line", is very readable, relevant, and informative. As a leading risk professional in banking and finance where losses due to these scams have recently to move into the millions at many institutions, the book is timely and is a must read for business leaders and consumers. It lucidly explains key phishing concepts and techniques and what can be done to mitigate the risks.

I used this book while completing both my Bachelor (Economic Crime Investigation, Security concentration) and Masters (Information Assurance)degrees. With Phishing scams on the rise, and more and more people falling victim to these scams, this book is a "must read" for anyone who is concerned with their identities. Phishing scams are not going away anytime soon, and Vines does a great job of teaching the reader what to look for to avoid becoming a victim and providing information that is current and real-world.

I purchased this book to research the subject of phishing and identity theft for a web project. I was not disappointed with the results, although you have to want this level of detail. For example, the book gives a thorough treatment of the technologies involved and how they work in unison to 'scam' you, driven of course by the anonymous perpetrators. If you dig deep enough and land on the right pages, you will find answers for questions like, "well how do I avoid that?", or "so what can I do to fix this?" I think the authors have thought about what the reader will feel, want and need.

The authors have identified the key readership as "Incident Response Teams", "Information Security Professionals", "Executive Management", and "Everyone who uses the Internet". The technical detail and complexity is great for the first three categories of readership, but stating the book should be read by "everyone who uses the Internet" is, well, stretching it because that is virtually everyone on the planet with an Internet connection. People who go to [...], for example, will have a lot of difficulty following the book and knowing which bits are both relevant and simple enough to put into their daily lives. However, most people understand how a book is presented so long as they follow the Contents page and use it prescriptively; even the technically challenged will get something from it.

One last thing. I like the fact the authors have backed up what they talk about with references and follow on information. For example, when they talk about identity theft and how it impacts everyday people like you and me, they also provide details about what to do and where to go for help. It's one thing to ramble on about a problem; it is another to give guidance and support to those whose lives have been impacted by this social menace.

I could think of worse things to waste $30 on, frankly. I doubt you will regret buying it unless you want something simple and non-technical.

Phishing is simply about someone sending out emails inviting you to `update your details', right? Well, yes ... and no. This book ably demonstrates that there is rather more to it than that. Authors Rachael Lininger and Russell Dean Vines explain the basics and then go on to lift the covers on a seedy underworld where criminal hackers combine social engineering and fraud techniques with spyware, rootkits and other tricks to exploit vulnerabilities in email readers and Internet browsers.

Phishing is essentially a detailed security awareness text focusing on phishing and identity theft. Its main aim is to enable the reader to identify and avoid phishing emails and websites, with secondary objectives being to raise awareness of spyware and other forms of malware, and to advise those who have already swallowed the phisher's bait.

The two chapters giving advice for financial services and similar companies whose customers are being phished are fairly weak, but to be fair there is not a huge amount they can do. Two chapters of advice for ordinary computer users go well beyond the usual `watch out for phishing emails', covering aspects such as antivirus and patching.

The following audiences are identified:
- Incident response teams at financial institutions
- Information security professionals and management
- Executive management of any company whose brand might be spoofed
- Everyone who uses the Internet
Phishing is quite a long and specific book that seems unlikely to be read by many non-technical readers, despite its laudable aims. The professional readership will benefit from this book.

Rachael Lininger is billed as a `technical writer in the information security department of a major US financial institution'. It is clear from her writing that she has written up a lot of phishing attacks before.
Russel Dean Vines is a well-qualified information security consultant and cyber-counterterrorism specialist as well as an accomplished jazz musician.

Although the topics are quite technical in places, the book treads a fine line between oversimplifying things and delving too deeply. Rachael's sections include some very welcome tongue-in-cheek asides and even the odd Monty Python reference to brighten up an otherwise rather dry topic. There are plenty of examples of phishing emails, analyzed down to the level of the HTML code, and URLs for more information.

Although things are moving rapidly in this field, Phishing remains relevant and useful two years or more after it was written. The authors' experience evidently qualified them to take a forward-looking perspective. This should definitely be on the bookshelf of the information security department at any eBusiness.

This book describes the latest threats about phishing in a clear, friendly way, and directs the reader to solutions. Since the subject is relatively new, there isn't a lot of information about phishing in book form. "Phishing" fills this gap quite well.

The authors do an excellent job of describing phishing and its nefarious variants, like pharming. If you are worried about the threat and want a reliable source of information, that is not alarmist, then consider this book. It describes not just phishing, but various technical countermeasures that have been attempted. Alas, the long and short is that most of these are of limited utility.

A blacklist of known phishing sites is vulnerable to zero day events - the delay from when the messages go out and when the site is identified as phishing and taken down by its ISP.

A two factor hardware gadget scales badly when people have accounts at several financial firms, and also at places like eBay or Amazon or other online retailers. There is no standardisation of these gadgets, even in the banking industry. Imagine having to carry around 5 or 6 of these for your accounts. Not practical.

The authors suggest examining the HTML source of some suspect messages. This depends on the user correctly identifying those messages. Then, the source can be very confusing to anyone not experienced in HTML. The source for the mail pages at Yahoo and Hotmail, for example, are very intricate, due to all the links and ads they put around the message.

Various toolbars are described in the book. These use heuristics (rules of thumb) and blacklists to try to assess if a web page or email is phishing. The blacklists have the defect noted above. And the heuristics are subjective.

Then there are the various email authentication plans. SPF, Sender Id and Domain Keys. But these authenticate the sender. They say nothing about the contents of the messages. Any of these will not stop spam, let alone phishing. Plus, the industry has not been able to agree on even one of these as a standard.

Encryption is mentioned in the text. But expecting users to be able to handle encrypting and decrypting the bulk of their messages is hopeless. Beyond the ken of most of them, who do not even understand the significance of the various browser certificate warnings that they currently get.

User education is stressed by the book. In part because of the lack of effective technical answers. Yet here, some percentage of naive users will always be with us. And they are disproportionately vulnerable to the phishing. Plus, the phishers refine their methods. Towards perhaps setting up pharms that are very convincing. And maybe using man in the middle attacks with these pharms.

By contrast, there are over 10 anti-phishing US Patents Pending, co-invented by me, that are qualitatively totally different from the industry methods given in the book. These methods are lightweight and objective and elegant. They offer a means of crushing most of phishing and pharming.

Phishing attacks, or at least the number of phishing emails intercepted by Messagelabs, jumped more than 1700% from June through November of 2004. The Anti-Phishing Working Group has reported an average growth of 25% per month for websites devoted to stealing your confidential information and your identity.

Phishing and identity theft are serious threats. However, as the authors point out early on in the book, identity theft has been around as long as there have been identities and is not unique to computers or the Internet. Phishing attacks are simply a new tool for identity thieves to use.

Phishing provides the information that consumers need to understand the threat and the risks and arm themselves to safeguard their information and defend against phishing attacks. The book is not bogged down with dry detail, but provides a ton of useful and necessary information in an easy-to-read format.

After reading this book, users will understand just how phishing works ad how it ties together with spam, spyware and other threats. Readers will also learn how to avoid becoming a phishing victim as well as who to contact or how to respond if they do.

This is an excellent book that just about anyone who uses computers should read.