[ISN] How Banks Could Help Minimize Phishing

From: InfoSec News (alerts@private)
Date: Wed May 16 2007 - 23:40:47 PDT


Forwarded with permission from: Security UPDATE <Security_UPDATE (at) list.windowsitpro.com>

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=== CONTENTS ===================================================

IN FOCUS: How Banks Could Help Minimize Phishing 

NEWS AND FEATURES
   - Strange Twist of Logic: Use Our Technology or Else!
   - Microsoft Retires MBSA 1.2, Suggests Shavlik Tools for Legacy Support
   - Recent Security Vulnerabilities

GIVE AND TAKE
   - Security Matters Blog: Windows Server 2003 Needs at Least One Service Pack
   - FAQ: View File Ownership in PowerShell
   - Product Evaluations from the Real World
   - Share Your Security Tips

PRODUCTS
   - Memory Stick Security

RESOURCES AND EVENTS

FEATURED WHITE PAPER

ANNOUNCEMENTS


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=== IN FOCUS: How Banks Could Help Minimize Phishing ===========
   by Mark Joseph Edwards, News Editor, mark at ntsecurity / net

One of the fastest growing and biggest problems in the security world 
today is phishing. Criminals who yearn to take advantage of the trend 
are swarming like mosquitoes on a warm and muggy summer evening--and 
they need to be swatted out of existence, fast. 

Today it's easy for a crook to set up a Web site with nearly any domain 
name they want. They take advantage of the situation by registering 
domains very similar to legitimate commercial domains. Banks and their 
customers are the biggest targets. In fact, data from the Anti-Phishing 
Working Group shows that since May 2006, 20,000 new phishing scams have 
been reported every month. The data also shows that the overwhelming 
majority of those scams targeted customers of various financial 
institutions. 

Phishing scams fool so many people that a mega-million-dollar 
antiphishing industry has popped up to produce products and services to 
help protect people. The tools provide decent proactive defense, but 
they aren't foolproof, and many people don't use them. 

Is there another way to help protect the public against the bank 
phishing plague? Recently, F-Secure's Mikko Hypponen wrote a brief 
article for "Foreign Policy" magazine (at the URL below) that proposes 
an idea that's so obvious I find it really difficult to figure out why 
no one has acted on it before. 
   http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=565F3:57B62BBB09A692791757267EB3FEAFE0

The idea was originally sent to him by a reader of F-Secure's blog back 
in October 2006 (see the URL below). The idea is simple: The Internet 
Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) could establish a 
new top-level domain (TLD) called something like .bank and allow only 
legitimate, verified financial institutions to register a name in that 
level. 
   http://list.windowsitpro.com/t?ctl=565ED:57B62BBB09A692791757267EB3FEAFE0

Hypponen expands on the idea by suggesting that as an added precaution 
against scammers--who would undoubtedly attempt to falsify information 
in an effort to register a name in that TLD--banks and other financial 
institutions could be charged a hefty fee for new registrations. 
Hypponen suggests something like $50,000 per domain. 

I think that other requirements centered around verification of 
credentials could be put in place too; these could be kept secret from 
the public so that scammers aren't sure exactly what they are. 

If a .bank TLD were available and had enough publicity, people would 
quickly become aware that their financial institutions should be using 
this TLD and could avoid bank Web sites that didn't use it. This would 
help put a serious damper on phishing scams. 

Of course, a .bank TLD wouldn't stop phishing entirely. Several 
techniques could still be used to fool or take advantage of 
unsuspecting bank customers; for example, DNS poisoning, man-in-the-
middle attacks, cross-site scripting, browser-based URL spoofing, and 
Trojan horses and keyloggers. So security tools and user education 
would still be important. Nevertheless, a new TLD would help. 

As for creating the TLD, if I understand correctly, it's not up to 
ICANN to start the process. Instead, some independent entity must 
request its creation. So, for example, banks (and other financial 
institutions) could unite towards that effort, establish an entity that 
would handle applications for domain name registration requests (and 
the related services), and formally petition ICANN to create the new 
TLD. ICANN would then review the proposal and decide whether to proceed 
with delegating the new TLD to the DNS root zone. 

I hope this happens. It seems like an idea whose time has come and an 
easy way for banks to help secure their customer interactions. 

===

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=== SECURITY NEWS AND FEATURES =================================

Strange Twist of Logic: Use Our Technology or Else!
   The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) has been used against 
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infringing on intellectual property rights. Now, in a strange twist of 
logic, the DMCA is being wielded as a club in an attempt to force the 
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Microsoft Retires MBSA 1.2, Suggests Shavlik Tools for Legacy Support
   Microsoft ended support for its Baseline Security Analyzer and 
recommends that customers who need to scan legacy products use Shavlik 
NetChk Limited, which produces output that can be opened and read by 
MBSA 2.0.1.
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Recent Security Vulnerabilities
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=== GIVE AND TAKE ==============================================

SECURITY MATTERS BLOG: Windows Server 2003 Needs at Least One Service 
Pack
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FAQ: View File Ownership in PowerShell
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