November 13, 2008

Doctor Web issues a warning as the new wave of phishing is coming up. Last days have seen spam mailings exploiting names of large international banks and Internet services including JPMorgan Chase Bank, RBC Royal Bank and Google AdWords. Users received fraudulent e-mails luring them into submitting their personal information, passwords or bank account data on fake web-sites.

Present day phishers employ more and more devious technique, so prompt alerting becomes a high priority task. In the face of the global financial crisis online swindlers rush to snare clients of large international banks. Last week saw a lot of message copying corporate design of the banks and tricking users into entering their personal information on specifically designed fraudulent web-sites.

Customers of JPMorgan Chase Bank were among targets of the phishing attacks. They were recommended to verify their online account access information using a specified link. A false web-site within the BIZ Internet domain had nothing to do with JPMorgan Chase Bank and data provided by a victim on the web-resource was obtained by a phisher.

Another mailing for customers of JPMorgan Chase Bank offered adding USD 50 to an account of a recipient for answering five questions. A web-form on a fraudulent web-site provided five simple questions and extra fields for a PIN code and a credit card number of a victim.

Clients of RBC Royal Bank received similar messages informing that a user account would be disabled after three failed attempts to sign in. Clicking on a provided link brought a user to a page that looked like a legitimate main page of the bank web-site in the EDU domain. A victim had to enter a credit card number and a password.

A number of e-mails aiming to obtain access data of customers of Google AdWords also increased. A phishing e-mal notified a user that display of his advertisement had been suspended while his account was still valid. A user was offered to use his login and password to update his “billing data”.

Doctor Web urges users to be more attentive while viewing message from banks and other financial institutions. Read a message carefully and consult the specified company for more information before you decide to reply. Also, pay attention to the top level domain name present in a link you are offered to follow.