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Analysis of Phishing in Networks International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 9, September-2013 196 ISSN 2229-5518 Analysis of Phishing in Networks Vignesh.M, Gokul Ram.T, Akhil.R, Rajesh Kumar N.S.R, Karthikeyan.R Abstract - Problem statement: Phishing is one of the growing internet crime and it becoming popular because these days, there is a huge black market out there of scammers and spammers, all of whom are willing to pay someone for providing them with details, such as Social security numbers, Driver’s license numbers, Names, date of births, etc. Credit card numbers, bank account numbers. Amazingly, a single valid credit card number can be sold on the black market for over $100 - which clearly shows you why there is an incentive for some people to participate in activities such as phishing. Wherever there is a profit to be made, people will flock to the industry - and in the case of phishing, it is people with very little conscience or very low morale. The draw of a quick buck is all it takes to turn an ordinary person in to a phishing professional. Approach: Here we approach some preventive measures and some technical tips to prevent and avoid phishing scam. Results: The results of phishing caused by phishing ranges from denial of access to e-mail to substantial financial loss. It is estimated that between May 2004 and May 2005, approximately 1.2 million computer users in the United States suffered losses caused by phishing, totaling approximately US$929 million. United States businesses lose an estimated US$2 billion per year as their clients become victims. Conclusion: Here we conclude with providing some preventive methods are User Education - Phishing exploits human vulnerabilities such that technical solutions can only block some of the phishing web sites, Anti-Phishing Groups and obtaining Legal Aspects. Index terms - phishing, analysis of phishing, web crime, prevent phishing, cybercrime, web security, Anti-phishing. —————————— —————————— 1. INTRODUCTION hishing is the method of making to get some information such as usernames, passwords, and P credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing emails may contain links to websites that are infected with malware. Phishing is typically carried out by e-mail spoofing or instant messaging and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almostIJSER identical to the legitimate one. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques Figure 1.1 – phishing information flow used to deceive users and exploits the poor usability of A complete phishing attack involves three roles of phishers. current web security technologies. Attempts to deal with the Firstly, mailers send out a large number of fraudulent emails growing number of reported phishing incidents include (usually through botnets), which direct users to fraudulent legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical websites. security measures. A phishing technique was described in Secondly, collectors set up fraudulent websites (usually detail in 1987, and (according to its creator) the first recorded hosted on compromised machines), which actively prompt use of the term "phishing" was made in 1995. The term is a users to provide confidential information. Finally, cashers variant of fishing probably influenced by phreaking and use the confidential information to achieve a pay-out. alludes to "baits" used in hopes that the potential victim will Monetary exchanges often occur between those phishers. "bite" by clicking a malicious link or opening a malicious The information flow is shown in Figure 1.1 attachment, in which case their financial information and passwords may then be stolen. 1.1 History and current status of phishing A phishing technique was described in detail, in a paper and presentation delivered to the International HP Users Group, Interex. The first recorded mention of the term "phishing" is found in the hacking tool AOHell (according to its creator), which included a function for stealing the passwords of America Online users. A recent and popular case of phishing is the suspected Chinese phishing campaign targeting Gmail accounts of highly ranked officials of the United States and South Korean’s Government, military, and Chinese political activists. The Chinese government continues to deny accusations of taking part in cyber-attacks from within its IJSER © 2013 http://www.ijser.org International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 9, September-2013 197 ISSN 2229-5518 borders, but evidence has been revealed that China’s own in their "hosts" file before undertaking a Domain Name People’s Liberation Army has assisted in the coding of System (DNS) lookup. By "poisoning" the hosts file, hackers cyber-attack software. have a bogus address transmitted, taking the user unwittingly to a fake "look alike" website where their 2. METHODS OF PHISING information can be stolen. 2.1 Types of Phishing Attacks Numerous different types of phishing attacks have now 2.1.7 System Reconfiguration Attacks been identified. Some of the more prevalent are listed below. System Reconfiguration Attacks modify settings on a user's PC for malicious purposes. For example: URLs in a favorites 2.1.1 Deceptive Phishing. file might be modified to direct users to look alike websites. The term "phishing" originally referred to account theft For example: a bank website URL may be changed from using instant messaging but the most common broadcast "bankofabc.com" to "bancofabc.com". method today is a deceptive email message. Messages about the need to verify account information, system failure 2.1.8 Data Theft. requiring users to re-enter their information, fictitious Unsecured PCs often contain subsets of sensitive account charges, undesirable account changes, new free information stored elsewhere on secured servers. Certainly services requiring quick action, and many other scams are PCs are used to access such servers and can be more easily broadcast to a wide group of recipients with the hope that compromised. Data theft is a widely used approach to the unwary will respond by clicking a link to or signing onto business espionage. By stealing confidential a bogus site where their confidential information can be communications, design documents, legal opinions, and collected. employee related records, etc., thieves profit from selling to those who may want to embarrass or cause economic 2.1.2 Malware-Based Phishing damage or to competitors. Malware-Based phishing refers to scams that involve running malicious software on users' PCs. Malware can be 2.1.9 DNS-Based Phishing ("Pharming"). introduced as an email attachment, as a downloadable file Pharming is the term given to hosts file modification or from a web site, or by exploiting known security Domain Name System (DNS)-based phishing. With a vulnerabilities--a particular issue for small and medium pharming scheme, hackers tamper with a company's host’s businesses (SMBs) who are not always able to keep their files or domain name system so that requests for URLs or software applications up to date. name service return a bogus address and subsequent communications are directed to a fake site. The result: users 2.1.3 Key loggers and Screen loggers are unaware that the website where they are entering Key loggers and screen loggers are particular varieties of confidential information is controlled by hackers and is malware that track keyboardIJSER input and send relevant probably not even in the same country as the legitimate information to the hacker via the Internet. They can embed website. themselves into users' browsers as small utility programs known as helper objects that run automatically when the 2.1.10 Content-Injection Phishing browser is started as well as into system files as device Content-Injection Phishing describes the situation where drivers or screen monitors. hackers replace part of the content of a legitimate site with false content designed to mislead or misdirect the user into 2.1.4 Session Hijacking giving up their confidential information to the hacker. For Session hijacking describes an attack where users' activities example, hackers may insert malicious code to log user's are monitored until they sign in to a target account or credentials or an overlay which can secretly collect transaction and establish their bona fide credentials. At that information and deliver it to the hacker's phishing server. point the malicious software takes over and can undertake unauthorized actions, such as transferring funds, without 2.1.11 Man-in-the-Middle Phishing the user's knowledge. Man-in-the-Middle Phishing is harder to detect than many other forms of phishing. In these attacks hackers position 2.1.5 Web Trojans themselves between the user and the legitimate website or Web Trojans pop up invisibly when users are attempting to system. They record the information being entered but log in. They collect the user's credentials locally and transmit continue to pass it on so that users' transactions are not them to the phisher. affected. Later they can sell or use the information or credentials collected when the user is not active on the 2.1.6 Hosts File Poisoning. system. When a user types a URL to visit a website it must first be translated into an IP address before it's transmitted over the Internet. The majority of SMB users' PCs running a Microsoft Windows operating system first look up these "host names" 2.1.12 Search Engine Phishing IJSER © 2013 http://www.ijser.org International Journal of Scientific & Engineering Research, Volume 4, Issue 9, September-2013 198 ISSN 2229-5518 Search Engine Phishing occurs when phishers create 2.
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