Filed under: Internet, Security
Phishing, fighting it, and Netcraft's toolbar
Brian Krebs of the Washington Post writes about how Banks and other financial institutions are stopping phishers by disallowing the use of their logo and website images via a white-listing technology for outgoing image links. This forces phishers to actually do some work if they want to duplicate the website, since the bank swaps the real images with a fraud warning image. The phishing site thinks it has displayed the image, but it has been duped into using an image that alerts consumers not to use the site. Pretty smart of banks, don't you think? Brian also mentions Netcraft's anti-phishing toolbar, and its near-flawless detection of phishing sites. Personally, I haven't used it, but wanted to see if you had heard of it, and if it is any good. Brian seems to think so.
After spending the better part of an hour on 
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Jeffrey McManus said 12:47PM on 9-21-2006
This is a very dumb idea. If I'm a bank I want bad guys to use my graphics because then I can write software to detect that someone is using my graphics and feed that information to anti-phishing software. Forcing the phisher to copy the graphics will stop none of them and will make it harder to detect.
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eatmytag said 12:48PM on 9-21-2006
First I was confused.. beacause I read "Phishing, fight it, and Netcraft's toolbar". I wondered why download squad wanted to fight the toolbar ;)
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Stanley said 4:26PM on 9-21-2006
I've used Netcraft's toolbar and it actually works as advertised. Using a phishing email to test, I've cliked a link and it alerted me that I was about to visit a phishing site. You can even submit suspicious sites using a button on the toolbar and Netcraft will let confrim via email whether or not a particular site is offending.
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