Traffic analysis and internet scams

A talk given at Google by Professor Ross Anderson entitled Searching for Evil on August 23, 2007.

Topics of interest include:

• Traffic analysis and relevance to online services
• Analogies from fraud to botnets and malware
• Security economics
• Targeting social networks
• Evolving attack strategy
• An overview of phishing
• Rock-phish use of nonstandard phishing with fast-flux dns
• Malicious site removal is slow when not infringing copyright
• A variety of scamming methods
• Irrevocable payments, western union, and e-gold
• Is advertising distorting the web?

Interesting conclusions:

• Vigilantes are the only people effectively targeting phishing mule recruitment
• Plagiarism detection useful to find scammers

Technorati Tags: attack strategy, phishing, presentation, social networks, traffic analysis

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