Re: Fake-alert: VERIFY YOUR MERIT.EDU WEBMAIL ACCOUNT

* Matthew Black · * Tue May 27 13:55:17 2008

On Sat, 24 May 2008 17:14:33 +0100
 Graeme Fowler <[email protected]> wrote:

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

As a US EDU, I can attest to the fact that a handful of
our webmail accounts have been compromised and subsequently
used to send out these types of phishing attacks. We never
figured out how the accounts were compromised. I suspect
users with hand-held devices are being snooped when they
use IMAP. Our webmail is SSL, but not IMAP.
Most of the spammers' messages appear as though someone
is manually using their cut & paste to generate the spam,
not anything automated (based on the rate messages go out.
Seems rather tedious.

matthew black
e-mail postmaster
network services
california state university, long beach