Taiwan: Spear Phishers Target Gmail Users
- Thursday, October 29, 2009, 1:44
- Threat Research
Trend Micro threat analysts found several phishing sites registered in China that target specific people or companies. The said email can customize phishing URLs using the names of intended recipients via a technique called “spear phishing.”
Spear phishing has been used by cybercriminals before in attacks that involved specific targets. In the previous post, “So Is It Twitter or Facebook?,” for instance, cybercriminals exploited Twitter’s direct message function to inform users that their pictures were seen on another website, the link to which is embedded in the same message. The link led to a bogus Facebook page from which user credentials are then stolen.
In this attack, the cybercriminals went as far as spoofing the From field to imply that the sender is from the same company the target is employed in. The URL embedded in the email is also customizable, depending on who its intended recipient is. Clicking the link points the user to a bogus Gmail Taiwan login page where the target’s user name has already been entered.
According to TT Tsai, this phishing attack seems to be targeting the Taiwan government as some of the phishing domains we have encountered are hosted in Taiwan, not to mention that the page uses the Chinese language.
Here’s a list of (continue reading...)