Want to phish from the dark side – make sure you have a license first…
No, we are not talking about our platform, we are talking about genuinely malicious phishing attack kits!
Akamai’s Principal Lead Security Researcher Or Katz, noted that phishing kit sellers are increasingly operating as if they were in a lawful commercial space.
They are using “factory-like production cycles to target dozens of brands,” Katz, who has been analysing the development of phishing kits since December last year, writes in the research.
One phishing kit distributor advertises kits that imitate a wide swath of websites, including Gmail, Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, PayPal and Skype.
“The threat posed by phishing factories isn’t just focused on the victims who risk having valuable accounts compromised and their personal information sold to criminals,” Katz writes.
“These factories are also a threat to brands and their stakeholders.”
In one case the same phishing kit was found on more than 1700 domains. That kit has targeted major brands including LinkedIn, Microsoft and large institutional banks.
Some developers are even building their own registration and licensing systems in a mimicry of legitimate software licenses.
Just as in the broader economy, there are also those scamming the scammers behind the phishing kits. Known as “rippers,” these people seek to steal existing phishing kits, copy back-end functionality, and present them as their own – whatever happened to “honour amongst thieves”!
