Meta-phishing

February 2008

The anti-malware industry can congratulate itself for there being an increasing awareness among users about phishing. Users are becoming increasingly phish-savvy and many now know that they should be wary of clicking on links in emails that appear to come from their bank - especially if they are asked to confirm their account details.

Unfortunately, however, the cunning phishers have worked out a way of exploiting this increased awareness. Recent phishing emails seen in the wild look very convincingly as if they have come from a bank - which is nothing new - but they also contain a warning to the recipient, informing them - as many genuine banks do - that their bank will never ask for their account details through email and that they should disregard any email in which they are asked for these details.

This is all true, of course, and on the face of it good advice. However, the email also contains an apparent link to the bank's website - which, you've guessed it, goes instead to a phishing site. The phishers presumably rely on the user being lulled into a false sense of security after seeing what appear to be genuine warning messages from their bank and failing to realise they are being directed to a bogus site.

More details, including an example of such an email are at Trend Micro here.

Phishing and spam
techniques