Are you sophisticated enough to recognize an Internet scam?

[Gary Stoneburner <gary.stoneburner@nist.gov>]

re:
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/7529172.htm

"Recently I have been receiving e-mails from PayPal. At least, they
look like they're from PayPal. They send me to a Web site that looks like
it's from PayPal. And it asks for my password, just like PayPal. The
problem is that it's not from PayPal, and if I do what the Web site says,
some criminal is going to siphon money out of my bank
account."

"But this new wave of semantic attacks targets the way people assign
meaning to content.  Many worms arrive as e-mail attachments. A user
receives an e-mail message from someone he knew. It has an enticing
subject line and a plausible message body. Of course a recipient is going
to click on the attachment. And that's exactly what causes the
infection."


Cheers,
Gary

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* Opinions expressed are not intended to reflect an official position
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* Gary Stoneburner
* Computer Security Division, National Institute of Standards & Technology
* 100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8930, Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8930         
* Phone: 301-975-5394, FAX: 301-948-0279, Email: Stoneburner@nist.gov
* http://csrc.nist.gov/staff/stoneburner/gshome.html
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