A Chat at the Old Phishin’ Hole

Abstract

Phishing is an attack in which victims are lured by official looking email to a fraudulent web-site that appears to be that of a legitimate service provider. The email also provides victims with a convincing reason to log-on to the site. If users are fooled into logging-on, then the attacker is provided with the victims’ authentication information for the legitimate service provider, often along with personal information, such as their credit-card data, checking account information or social security data. Successful phishing attacks can result not only in identity and asset theft, but also in more subtle attacks that need not be directly directly harmful to the victim but which have negative consequences for society (for example: money laundering).