By Will Sturgeon, 5 May 2004 18:20
NEWS Twelve alleged cyber criminals have been arrested in the south-east of England on charges relating to the practice of phishing - the attempt to deceive people into handing over bank details or other personal information through the use of bogus web forms.
The National Hi-Tech Crime Unit arrested six men and six women from the former Soviet states of Estonia, Latvia, Russia and the Ukraine in a sting operation which it ran in conjunction with the National Crime Squad, the FBI and the US Secret Service.
The arrests confirm many people's suspicions that such crimes are being perpetrated by Russian organised crime groups.
Detective Superintendent Mick Deats, deputy head of the NHTCU, said: "Organised Crime is targeting internet users in the UK to launder money stolen from online bank accounts where people have been duped into handing over their account details.
"We believe this gang has sent hundreds of thousands of pounds back to Russia."
Phishing has become a common internet menace and one which appears to be growing, as organised criminals realise the benefits and greater reach of running scams online.
Experts certainly agree on the fact that the perpetrators of such scams aren't chancers.
The increasingly devious and ingenious methods employed by phishers to trick users and ape the appearance and functionality of established online sites - such as banks and e-tailers - certainly supports that assertion.
Pete Simpson, ThreatLab manager at Clearswift, said such scams are run by "a combination of con artists and highly-skilled programmers".
Comments
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1. anonymous
Today I received a "Citibank" request for me to confirm my bank details otherwise my access to my account would be blocked.. problem .. I dont have a Citibank account!
2. KB
You may not have a citibank account but there are also Halifax, Lloyds Tsb and barclaycard scams going around on the off chance that you will have one of these accounts. I'd advise you always type in the address or use your own link to the bank. The scams are getting more convincing.
3. Paul K Jeffrey
I blame the (newspaper) media. No seriously, instead of concentrating on the junk they normally report from the IT and Internet sectors they should be trying to educate the AOL generation that not everything is as it seems. On the other hand, "... a fool and his money are soon parted"
4. Phish Hater
Congratulations to the law enforcement people on catching the phishers; let's hope more of this occurs.
It seems that phishing is inherently easier to resolve, in general, than other kinds of attacks. After all, there needs to be an IP address somewhere in the message pointing to the culprit's web server. So, why don't the good guys develop some tools that attack the culprit's ip address and shut it down remotely? If 10,000 people receive a phish, and only one percent used such a tool to attack the site, the owners of the web server would be sure to shut down the offending site and perhaps even turn in the phisher.
Problem solved, no?