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spear-phishing

White House confirms 'spearphishing' intrusion

The White House has confirmed that one of its internal computer networks -- reportedly a military office in charge of the president's communications -- has been targeted in a successful "spearphishing" attack.

An article yesterday published by the conservative FreeBeacon.com Web site said that hackers with ties to China's government had recently breached an unclassified "system used by the White House Military Office for nuclear commands," including the so-called nuclear football.

Spearphishing means an attacker is targeting a specific person or group, typically by sending fake e-mail that masquerades as legitimate correspondence.

The … Read more

Epsilon partner warned of phishing attacks months ago

The recent data breach reported by e-mail marketing service provider Epsilon that exposed names and e-mail addresses for customers at dozens of companies comes four months after an Epsilon technology partner warned about targeted phishing attacks on e-mail service providers and on its own network.

Return Path said in late November that thousands of e-mail addresses had been stolen from its system after one of its employees clicked on a link in a phishing e-mail message. Epsilon uses Return Path's e-mail monitoring technology in the e-mail marketing services it provides to other companies.

"The employee's system was … Read more

Personal details show up in a recent spam attack

For this week's Security Watch column and Security Bites podcast, I spoke with Tod Beardsley, lead counter fraud engineer for TippingPoint, a provider of network-based intrusion prevention systems. The column and podcast talk about how social networking can be used for targeted attacks. Toward the end of the interview, I asked Beardsley what was the most interesting case he's worked on in the last six months.

"In the last six months, there was a case involving the Better Business Bureau. This is public. The story there is that the Better Business Bureau keeps these databases of all … Read more