Extra Credit Presentation: Allegra Earl CSCI 101 T 3:30

What is Phishing? The act of sending an to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft. Dangers of Phishing: In 2003 there was a phishing scam in which users received s supposedly from eBay claiming that the user’s account was about to be suspended unless they clicked on the provided link and updated the credit card information that the genuine eBay already had.

What is Pharming? Pharming is the exploitation of a vulnerability in Domain Name Service (DNS) server software that allows a hacker to redirect that website's traffic to another web site. DNS servers are the machines responsible for resolving Internet names into their real addresses

What is Spam? Spam is the act of flooding the Internet with many copies of the same message, in an attempt to force the message on people who would not otherwise choose to receive it. Most spam is commercial advertising, often for dubious products, or get-rich- quick schemes. Spam costs the sender very little to send -- most of the costs are paid for by the recipient or the carriers rather than by the sender.

Dangers They Present In the past the incidence of a virus traveling through would be fairly predictable. That has changed with viruses now working together with Spam. An example is the “SoBig” virus whose purpose was to create a broad spamming infrastructure by planting code on unwilling participants PCs creating a mass threat to security.

How to Protect Yourself.. It's time to get serious about spam blocker software - as a first line of defense! Note: Spam filters typically do not provide users with protection against pharming, as pharming is not perpetrated through the spreading of spam s. Authentication software such as Green Armor Solutions

Authorities Response? In March of 2005, United States Senator Patrick Leahy introduced the Anti-Phishing Act of The anti- phishing / anti-pharming bill proposes that criminals who utilize phishing and related hacker techniques such as pharming in order to defraud consumers be fined up to $250,000 and receive jail terms of up to five years