Spy-Phishing latest weapon with cybercriminals

This post is created by Ashish Mohta from Technospot.net where understanding technology is very simple.

Internet is growing faster and more robust everyday maximizing our production and access to the resources easy.But then where there is resource we tend to have people looking to steal it. There are many techniques which is used by the cyber criminals to get hold of your data. In my last post I discussed about “How to avoid identity fraud ?” , Now let’s discuss about phishing and spy phishing which is one of the major technique developed for it.

What is phishing ?

Phishing is a technique in which details of a user is stolen either by luring him to a false site which imitates similar to an original site , say paypal, or through false email alerts. Now the good news about phishing was it was easy to stop, it was easy to found as soon as it got reported. Major browsers can tell you that its a phishing site.

What is spy phishing ?

At its most basic level, the term spy phishing refers to phishing attack that employs other threats, usually spyware and backdoor Trojans.

How it works ?

Suppose you visit site say “xyz.com” , when you vist this site it has nothing wrong. It gives you friendly message with nice screen shots, says for free greeting cards and others. You leave happily. But what has happened in the background, while you were on the website it downloaded a trojan or some kind of spyware on your system. The downloaded malware also does nothing.

Now the downloaded spyware has some special feature. It gets activated only when you open a particular site, for example lets take paypal. com. Now as soon as you visit paypal.com the trojan in background starts recording everything you enter. Your name, password any transaction. When you are done, your identity and details are sent to the malicious third party

How to avoid spy phishing ?

Its really difficult to suggest, honestly. Due to its varied nature and complex steps its long lived that spyware sites. Best I would suggest is keep you anti spyware updated. I found Windows Defender to be working best for me till now. Spyware these days come along with Yahoo and Google toolbar also.

I hope you enjoyed the post, feel free to ask anything in the comments.I would anser to them for sure.

If you want to learn more on security feel free to explore my security archive

This post was published by on April 8, 2007

About the Author: Thilak Rao works as a Social Media Expert. He is one of the first professional bloggers from India, and he loves to write, travel and click photos. Follow him on Twitter @thilak

  • http://www.safemail.thezerogroup.com Zer0

    This is why I never use my real email address. I use a fake, disposable email address from safemail.thezerogroup.com

  • http://digitalmail.blogspot.com/ Atul

    Nice post thilak , 20% to 35% work like phishing with the help of trojans is done by yahoo messenger chats , I have seen many guys create girls name id and send you files named as my pic or other and after receiving you will click on open and they will activate and you will not found any results and not even that files because they are hidden .

  • http://www.technospot.net/blogs/ Ashish Mohta

    @Zero: Thats really neat. Thanks For the info. i will be looking at that site.

    @Atul: You are right there. I have seen people trying to hack other systems using messenger. Be careful while accepting the files on chat.

  • http://digitalmail.blogspot.com/ Atul

    Good work ashish , Sorry ,actually i didn’t remembered that you have written this nice post .

  • http://www.saylike.blogspot.com/ Mohd. Hashim Khan

    The most important thing to remember whenever filling user and password to any site is to look at its URL, it should start with https:// and not http://