Attack Techniques: SMS Gift Card Scams

Last week, I had the chance to fly to Redmond to meet my new teammates on the Protection team in Microsoft Defender. I also had the chance to catch up with a few old friends from the Edge team, one of whom I met for coffee on Friday morning. As we sat down with ourContinue reading “Attack Techniques: SMS Gift Card Scams”

Attack Techniques: Spoofing via UserInfo

I received the following phishing lure by SMS a few days back: The syntax of URLs is complicated, and even tech-savvy users often misinterpret them. In the case of the URL above, the actual site’s hostname is brefjobgfodsebsidbg.com, and the misleading http://www.att.net:911 text is just a phony username:password pair making up the UserInfo component ofContinue reading “Attack Techniques: Spoofing via UserInfo”

Attack Techniques: Open Redirectors, CAPTCHAs, Site Proxies, and IPFS, oh my

The average phishing site doesn’t live very long– think hours rather than days or weeks. Attackers use a variety of techniques to try to keep ahead of the Defenders who work tirelessly to break their attack chains and protect the public. Defenders have several opportunities to interfere with attackers: Each of these represents a weakContinue reading “Attack Techniques: Open Redirectors, CAPTCHAs, Site Proxies, and IPFS, oh my”

Attack Techniques: Blended Attacks via Telephone

Last month, we looked at a technique where a phisher serves his attack from the user’s own computer so that anti-phishing code like SmartScreen and SafeBrowsing do not have a meaningful URL to block. Another approach for conducting an attack like this is to send a lure which demands that the victim complete the attackContinue reading “Attack Techniques: Blended Attacks via Telephone”

Defense Techniques: Reporting Phish

While I have a day job, I’ve been moonlighting as a crimefighting superhero for almost twenty years. No, I’m not a billionaire who dons a rubber bat suit to beat up bad guys– I’m instead flagging phishing websites that try to steal money and personal information from the less tech-savvy among us. I have hadContinue reading “Defense Techniques: Reporting Phish”