[104724] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: Fake-alert: VERIFY YOUR MERIT.EDU WEBMAIL ACCOUNT
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Graeme Fowler)
Sat May 24 12:16:00 2008
From: Graeme Fowler <graeme@graemef.net>
To: peter@peter-dambier.de
In-Reply-To: <48382E10.70904@peter-dambier.de>
Date: Sat, 24 May 2008 17:14:33 +0100
Cc: nanog@nanog.org
Errors-To: nanog-bounces@nanog.org
On Sat, 2008-05-24 at 17:02 +0200, Peter Dambier wrote:
> I dont trust it:
Quite right too, it's a spear-phishing attack. This is currently an
almost daily occurrence for .edu domains.
The compromised accounts are frequently abused via webmail systems,
being used to send out more scams.
The scammers responsible are also targeting UK higher ed institutions,
with a limited degree of success. I can't really speak for my US
counterparts with regards the success of the attacks, but one would
surmise that it's more or less the same. To paraphrase badly:
All users are gullible, but some are more gullible than others.
-g
