Strong Increase Of Phishing Sites That Use Https

Not only legitimate websites use https more and more, phishing sites also have more and more access to a secure connection. There is even a strong increase in the number of https phishing sites, according to security company PhishLabs . In the third quarter of this year almost 25 percent of the observed phishing sites had a https connection.

A quarter earlier was still about 12 percent, while a year ago less than 3 percent of the phishing sites had a ssl certificate. According to the security company, there are two reasons why there is an increase in https usage among phishing sites. The first reason is that phishing sites are regularly offered via hacked, legitimate websites. When a legitimate website with a ssl certificate is hacked, the phishing page that is offered via the website will also have a secure connection.

The second reason according to PhishLabs is that criminals register domains for their phishing site and then enable https themselves. This then happens via certificate authorities that offer free ssl certificates, such as Let's Encrypt and Comodo. In this way, the phishing site looks more legitimate, says Crane Hassold of PhishLabs. Chrome automatically displays the "Safe" message at https sites. This refers to the secure connection, but end users think the website they are visiting is safe, Hassold notes.

"The misunderstanding about the meaning of https among the general public and the confusing appointment of https websites in browsers are the main reasons why it is a popular preference of phishers in hosting phishing sites," Hassold continues. "Combined with the rapid growth of https among website owners, we expect the number of https phishing sites to grow further."

CEO Fraudsters Hit When Using 'Reply-To' Option

Criminals who engage in fraud CEO, also known as business mail compromise, adapt to various new tactics to highlight organizations, such as using the 'reply-to' option. That claims security PhishLabs. CEO fraud is a form of cyber crime involving financial people within an organization to receive an email that appears to come from the director.

In the email is asked to urgently make a large sum of money about. The FBI have criminals in this way for 1.2 billion dollars managed to steal. At the first attack, the criminals were using free email services company or hacked accounts to send fraudulent requests. Now they're using hacked e-mail accounts from Internet company GoDaddy. These accounts are in fact easy to reproduce through phishing attacks, support the use of the 'reply-to' option and the 'identity' feature.

Through this feature simple as the sender can specify any email address. Fraudsters use this feature for composing an e-mail to from a legitimate address of the attacked organization, such as the email address of the director. Then they fill the reply-to address an e-mail address is managed by the criminals. Most e-mail clients only show the name and hide the e-mail address, so employees do not immediately see the reply-to address.

Another change in method is that the first e-mail is concise and contains no payment details. In earlier attacks was financial controller immediately sent to the bank account and amount to. Now the fraudsters exchanged several emails before the account data is transmitted. And also for the bill is the tactic changed. Foreign accounts were first used in China, for example, now the US accounts. PhishLabs advises organizations to create more awareness among the staff and spam filters first so that fraudulent emails are blocked.