Lawsuits set to start raining on Europe, Africa and Middle East
Microsoft has kicked off a legal programme that by the end of June will have initiated more then 100 legal cases against organisations running phishing scams from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The first 53 cases will be filed within the coming two weeks against indivuduals from Turkey, France, Spain, Morocco, the UK, Germany, Austria, Egypt and Sweden.
The suspects were traced down as part of investigations of US phising attacks, or are the result of Microsoft assisting local authorities in tracking down phishing perpertrators.
All the attacks were targeted at Microsoft users or services such as Hotmail, MSN or Passport.
The legal offensive is part of Microsoft's expanded Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative in which the software maker seeks eradicate phishing attacks through education, partnerships and prosecution.
"What's critical is that we start developing global enforcement programmes throughout the world to address phishing and all cyber crime issues," Tim Cranton, a Microsoft senior attorney and director of the Internet Safety Enforcement Programme.
Phishing websites try to lure consumers into giving up confidential information such as credit card numbers or user names and passwords. They most commonly target US bank customers and Ebay users. But attacks are starting to become more sophisticated and for instance have been phishing for login names and passwords of corporate networks.
Data from email security vendor CipherTrust indicates that most phishing attacks originate from computers in the US (32.1 per cent) and Korea (15.4 per cent). But its hard to determine where an attack exactly orriganated because they are usually launched from hacked computers that are part of botnets controlled by the phishing gang, explained Cranton.
CipherTrust's Chief Technology Officer Paul Judge applauded Microsoft's initiative.
"Without the enforcement, people feel that there is really no downside to participate in this type of activity. It is almost a free for all. They can hide behind the anonymity of the technology. But to see that there is a group that will invest the time and resources that is necessary to track them down bring them to court, then several of them have to reconsider the risk and reward of this type of activity. Hopefully they will walk the other way and think of more useful things to do with their time," Judge said.
Legal actions against spammers have had helped cut back spam, he argued, and he expects the same to happen in the field of phishing.
Microsoft has kicked off a legal programme that by the end of June will have initiated more then 100 legal cases against organisations running phishing scams from Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
The first 53 cases will be filed within the coming two weeks against indivuduals from Turkey, France, Spain, Morocco, the UK, Germany, Austria, Egypt and Sweden.
The suspects were traced down as part of investigations of US phising attacks, or are the result of Microsoft assisting local authorities in tracking down phishing perpertrators.
All the attacks were targeted at Microsoft users or services such as Hotmail, MSN or Passport.
The legal offensive is part of Microsoft's expanded Global Phishing Enforcement Initiative in which the software maker seeks eradicate phishing attacks through education, partnerships and prosecution.
"What's critical is that we start developing global enforcement programmes throughout the world to address phishing and all cyber crime issues," Tim Cranton, a Microsoft senior attorney and director of the Internet Safety Enforcement Programme.
Phishing websites try to lure consumers into giving up confidential information such as credit card numbers or user names and passwords. They most commonly target US bank customers and Ebay users. But attacks are starting to become more sophisticated and for instance have been phishing for login names and passwords of corporate networks.
Data from email security vendor CipherTrust indicates that most phishing attacks originate from computers in the US (32.1 per cent) and Korea (15.4 per cent). But its hard to determine where an attack exactly orriganated because they are usually launched from hacked computers that are part of botnets controlled by the phishing gang, explained Cranton.
CipherTrust's Chief Technology Officer Paul Judge applauded Microsoft's initiative.
"Without the enforcement, people feel that there is really no downside to participate in this type of activity. It is almost a free for all. They can hide behind the anonymity of the technology. But to see that there is a group that will invest the time and resources that is necessary to track them down bring them to court, then several of them have to reconsider the risk and reward of this type of activity. Hopefully they will walk the other way and think of more useful things to do with their time," Judge said.
Legal actions against spammers have had helped cut back spam, he argued, and he expects the same to happen in the field of phishing.
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