141 results about "Phishing attack" patented technology

Various techniques are provided for detecting phishing attacks and notifying users of such attacks. In one example, a machine-implemented method can be provided for detecting a phishing attack over a computer network. A web page can be accessed and information associated with the web page can be processed. One or more conditions can be set in response to the processing. The conditions can be compared to a set of conditions indicative of a phishing attack. A user can then be informed of a potential phishing attack corresponding to the conditions through the display of an alert window and/or an icon. Such actions can also be performed in response to a user's selection of a link appearing in an email message. Appropriate systems and/or computer readable media incorporating these features can also be provided.

Described herein are methods, network devices and machine-readable storage media for detecting whether a message is a phishing attack based on the collective responses from one or more individuals who have received that message. The individuals may flag the message as a possible phishing attack, and/or may provide a numerical ranking indicating the likelihood that the message is a possible phishing attack. As responses from different individuals may have a different degree of reliability, each response from an individual may be weighted with a corresponding trustworthiness level of that individual, in an overall determination as to whether a message is a phishing attack. A trustworthiness level of an individual may indicate a degree to which the response of that individual can be trusted and/or relied upon, and may be determined by how well that individual recognized simulated phishing attacks.

Described herein are methods, network devices and machine-readable storage media for conducting simulated phishing attacks on an individual so as to educate the individual about the various ways in which phishing attacks may be disguised. Specifically described is a simulated phishing attack involving a sequence of messages. At least one of the messages has an associated target action that would ordinary, if the attack were an actual phishing attack, result in the individual's personal information and/or computing device becoming compromised. In the simulated phishing attack, no malicious action is actually performed. At least one of the other messages is designed to draw attention to the message with the target action.

The present invention relates to methods, network devices, and machine-readable media for an integrated environment for automated processing of reports of suspicious messages, and furthermore, to a network for distributing information about detected phishing attacks.

Described herein are methods, network devices and machine-readable media for preventing the malicious use of phishing simulation records. Phishing simulation records often times can reveal which individuals are most susceptible to phishing attacks. In the event that an attacker gains access to these records, the attacker can exploit such information to send phishing attacks to those individuals who are the most susceptible. To address such vulnerabilities, a phishing simulation record of an individual is only associated with an e-mail alias of the individual. Further, such e-mail alias may be deactivated after phishing simulations have been completed. Therefore, even if an attacker were able to identify individuals most susceptible to phishing attacks, the attacker will be unable to send any phishing attacks to those individuals since their e-mail aliases will have been deactivated.

Described herein are methods, network devices and machine-readable storage media for detecting whether a message is a phishing attack based on the collective responses from one or more individuals who have received that message. The individuals may flag the message as a possible phishing attack, and/or may provide a numerical ranking indicating the likelihood that the message is a possible phishing attack. As responses from different individuals may have a different degree of reliability, each response from an individual may be weighted with a corresponding trustworthiness level of that individual, in an overall determination as to whether a message is a phishing attack. A trustworthiness level of an individual may indicate a degree to which the response of that individual can be trusted and/or relied upon, and may be determined by how well that individual recognized simulated phishing attacks.

A method for establishing a campaign for a simulated phishing attack includes receiving, via a campaign manager, specification of a plurality of parameters for a campaign including at least an identifier of a campaign and identification of users to which to send the campaign, establishing, via the campaign manager, a type of exploit for the campaign and one or more types of data to collect via the type of exploit, storing, by the campaign manager, the campaign comprising the plurality of parameters, and identifying, by a simulation server, the campaign stored in the database to create a simulated phishing email, to be sent to email accounts of the users, using the plurality of parameters of the campaign, wherein the simulated phishing email is to be created to have a link to a landing page comprising the type of exploit and configured to collect the one or more types of data.

The present invention provides both method and apparatus for enhancing a user's network security. For example, it may be used to prevent phishing attacks being effected via the internet. A number of legitimate network addresses along with associated data are stored. Subsequently, analysis is carried out on any data transmitted between the user and a remote site to determine if the transmitted data is related to the stored data. If it is found that the data is related, user access to the remote site is denied unless the remote site's address is one of the stored network addresses. This provides more security than was previously available since it protects the user against attacks from sites that were not previously known to pose a threat.

A method for creating a plurality of campaigns for simulated phishing attacks includes creating, by a campaign manager, a plurality of campaigns for simulated phishing attacks having a plurality of parameters including at least a time schedule, each of the plurality of campaigns having at least one parameter different than other campaigns of the plurality of campaigns, and identifying, by a simulation server from the database, a first campaign and a second campaign from the plurality of campaigns from which to create a first simulated phishing email to send on a first time schedule to email accounts of users of the first campaign, and a second simulated phishing email to send on a second time schedule, different than the first time schedule, to email accounts of users of the second campaign.

A method operates to detect personal identifying or account information exchanged in a real-time electronic communication occurring between computer network users, such as electronic chat. A detected personal identifier may be recognized as an attempt on the part of one user to engage in a phishing attack upon another user or to otherwise steal the other user's sensitive personal information. Upon recognizing the communication as an unwarranted attempt to collect such information, the electronic communication may be monitored, and communication of the personal information may be prevented.

The present invention describes a method and a system for multi-level authentication of a user and a server. The user registration process in the invention enables user to personalize the web page of the server. Further, the user authentication takes place in a multi-step process including entering credentials such as user ID, subset of user's password, subset of shared secret and a One Time Password (OTP). The system of the present invention provides various means of entering the said credentials which prevents phishing attacks.

The disclosure generally relates to a method for preventing phishing attacks on a computer browser. The method includes the steps of: providing a web browser having a bookmark group; directing the browser to a first Uniform Resource Locator (“URL”) having a first URL address, the first URL address having a plurality of alpha-numeric characters pointing to a first IP address; saving the first URL address in the bookmark group as a first bookmark; receiving an email communication containing a second URL address, the second URL address having a plurality of alpha-numeric characters similar to the first URL address and purporting to point to the first IP address; comparing the first URL address with the second URL address; and determining whether the first URL address and the second URL address share an identical IP addresses.

Detection of email phishing attacks is initiated when an email is received in a computer system. The email is parsed for features indicative of an email phishing attack, such as a link to an external website. The link to the website is followed to connect to and access the website. Fictitious information, such as fake user credentials or fake credit card information, is provided to the website. The response of the website to the fictitious information is evaluated to determine if the website is a phishing site. The website is deemed to be a phishing site when the website accepts the fictitious information as valid. The email is blocked to prevent its addressee from opening the email when the email is deemed part of a phishing attack, such as when it links to a phishing site.

The invention provides a system and a method for anti-phishing emails based on link domain name and user feedback. The system comprises an email receiving device, an email pre-processing device, an email property judging device, an outputting device and a feedback processing device. The method comprises the following steps: analyzing characteristics of the link domain name in the email, combiningwith a controlled network user feedback strategy, and identifying phishing emails and doubtful phishing emails. The invention has advantages of high identification efficiency, low resource consumptionand no error rate. The invention can be configured to email servers, gateway servers and the like that require high real-time performance, protect the controlled network user against cheating by thephishing emails, resist the interference from the spiteful user in the controlled network, and can be widely applied to the application fields of network email filtering management, anti-phishing attack and the like.

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium having stored thereon instructions when executable by a processor perform operations including responsive to receiving an email including a URL, conducting an analysis of the email including: (i) analyzing a header and a body, and (ii) analyzing the URL; analyzing contents of a web page directed to by the URL; generating a score indicating a level of confidence the email is associated with a phishing attack based on at least one of the analysis of the email or the analysis of the contents of the web page; and responsive to the score being below a threshold, virtually processing the web page to determine whether the web page is associated with the phishing attack is shown.

A computerized method for analyzing a subject URL to determine whether the subject URL is associated with a phishing attack is disclosed. The method includes steps of detecting keypoints within a screenshot of a webpage corresponding to the subject URL and determining a set of confidences based on an analysis of the detected keypoints with a model. Each confidence within the set of confidences is assigned to feature vector within a set of training feature vectors representing a training set of URLs used in generating the model. The method comprises performing an image comparison between the screenshot and a screenshot corresponding to a feature vector within the set of training feature vectors, the feature vector being assigned a highest confidence. Responsive to determining the image comparison result exceeds a predefined threshold, transmitting an alert indicating that the subject URL is associated with the phishing attack.

Personalization images are included in email messages to combat phishing attacks in which an attacker attempts to trick a user into divulging sensitive information over the Internet. When a recipient of an email message receives a message, the recipient can visually inspect the personalization image in the message. If the personalization image is missing or if the personalization image is not valid, the email recipient is alerted to the possibility of a phishing attack. Email message content may be encrypted. A gateway associated with an email message sender may be used to perform encryption operations on the message content. The gateway may create an html version of the email by placing the encrypted message content in an html wrapper. An image reference corresponding to the personalization image may be embedded in the html version of the message.

Phishing is detected by creating a message transfer agent (MTA) map, with each point on the MTA map referencing an MTA. Points on the MTA map are connected based on a number of emails with same signature sent by MTAs represented on the MTA map. Reference MTA groups are identified from the map. Phishing is detected when an MTA sent an email with the same signature as that of emails sent by MTAs belonging to a reference MTA group but the MTA is not a member of the reference MTA group.

The invention includes a method and apparatus for preventing phishing attacks. A first method, for informing a user that a remote server is valid, includes receiving a request for information available from the remote server where the request includes an identifier, obtaining a dynamic personal attribute associated with the user using the identifier, and propagating the dynamic personal attribute toward the user, wherein the dynamic personal attribute is adapted for use by the user in validating the remote server. The remote server may be a web server, an authentication server, or any other remote device with which the user may desire to authenticate. A second method, for informing a user that a received message is associated with a valid website, includes obtaining a dynamic personal attribute associated with a user, generating a message for the user where the message is adapted to enable the user to request a website and includes the dynamic personal attribute associated with the user, and propagating the message toward the user. The received message may be any type of message, such as an email message, an instant message, a text message, and the like.

A method for detecting and blocking a Man-in-the-Middle phishing attack carried out on a client connection which has been fraudulently routed through an anonymous proxy server. An agent downloaded to the client device opens a client direct connection to the security host protecting against the attack and sends a client direct connection ID to the security host for validation. By comparing IP addresses correlated via the validated client direct connection ID, the security host determines whether the original connection is direct (secure) or indirect (attack via phishing proxy). The detection and blocking can be performed by the service provider's server or by a third-party validation server handling all security without additional requirements on the service provider server. In addition to detecting and blocking such attacks, methods for client direct connection ID, as well as automatic transparent and seamless attack circumvention and preemptive circumvention are disclosed.

An embodiment of the present invention discloses an on-line payment method and system. The scheme provided by the embodiment of the invention comprises the steps of: when receiving an electronic payment request, preventing service parameters from being reused and initiating a phishing attack through various specific anti-phishing verifications, for example, increasing the timeliness of the service parameters by timestamps of anti-phishing parameters; verifying the request source, i.e., determining whether the request source for this request is one in a white list or not through the request source white list, thereby completely eradicating the possibility of being embezzled by a phishing website from the request source; and determining whether a creater of an external business and a payer of an internal business are the same user by comparing an IP address of an external call with an IP address obtained by the local, so as to prevent someone paying for a business created by the phishing website itself. These verification methods monitor the business parameters from various aspects and realize protection and control of the behavior of anti-phishing.

A system and method for preventing phishing attacks by comparing the address of a Web site to which a user wishes to enter sensitive information (or indeed any type of user information) to at least one previous address to which the user already submitted at least a portion of this information. If the current address and the previous address are not identical, the user is preferably at least alerted; more preferably transmission of the information is blocked. The present invention may also optionally operate even if only a portion of the sensitive information is submitted, such as only the password for example.