Phishers filch Red Cross money for quake victims in China
By siliconindia   |   Saturday, 24 May 2008, 02:04 IST   |    1 Comments
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New Delhi: This may be the most cruel face of phishing. A chunk of the international online donations pouring in to China for relief efforts in earth quake hit Sichuan has been siphoned off by an act of phishing, says International cyber security engine Websense. The donations stolen were those made to Red Cross by sympathetic souls worldwide. The phishing site posed itself as a representative of the Red Cross and provided multiple bank account numbers for donors to send donations. The attack was mounted in China. Though the link of the phishing website has disappeared after alerts were issued by security agencies, authorities fear the culprits could surface somewhere else in the cyber world. Phishing denotes an attempt to fraudulently acquire personal details like passwords and credit card details from surfers. It is typically carried out by e-mail or instant messaging and often directs users to enter details at a website. Though financial losses from such attacks run into millions of dollars, but it is very difficult to get accurate details on the financial loss for any single event as multiple links and multiple bank account numbers are used by the hackers for such activities. In most of the cases, phishers use e-mails for enticing prospective donors towards contributing on the sites. "In about 5 percent of cases, they become successful in enticing the donor to the website," Prakash said. "Normally, such links are active for about 6-7 hours after which the hackers go for phishing using a different identity," Websense Security Labs channel manager for Saarc region Jyoti Prakash said. According to a Gartner survey, financial losses due to phishing have risen to about $3.2 billion in 2007. Internet users could save themselves from being the victim of these types of crimes by following guidelines of reputed security agencies or government organizations like CERT. For instance, Internet users are always advised to type the complete web address of the particular website that they want to visit and avoid being channeled by some other link sites, especially in cases where financial transactions are involved.

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