Introduction to new phishing techniques
Many Internet users are still unaware of the dangers of phishing, a technique to steal credentials, financial data and other sensitive information from unsuspecting Internet users. Some may know about first generation phishing attempts and that they should not trust emails that they receive in their inbox, and that they certainly should not open any attachments or click on links if they suspect illegitimate emails.
Still, there are many more who do not know even that and fall pray to phishing attacks that steal data or plant malicious software on their systems.
Anti-Phishing toolbars and implementations in major browsers or on a system-wide level are useful but can, as you will see, give you a false sense of security. This can be attributed to the fact that databases that contain the information are not updated in real time. Someone has to report a phishing website before it will be added to the database, it would be more than difficult to create an automatic solution for the problem. While there are attempts to do just that, those solutions are not 100% accurate either.
A second issue are new techniques used by hackers that are not detected by ant-phishing toolbars and programs.
Flash Phishing
Anti-Phishing toolbars do check the page contents for signs of phishing and also addresses, but do not analyze flash objects at all. Hackers know this and tend to use this to their advantage by using flash to emulate the original website. Users may believe that a website is "clean" because their anti-phishing toolbar does not warn them if they visit it.
It is however relatively easy to find out if the current website is fake.
- You need to take a look at the url in the address bar. If it is not the original address leave it immediately.
- Check if it is using https instead of http. If it is using http leave the site immediately.
- If it is using https check the certificate.
- If the site is only using flash leave it.
- Never follow links in emails (unless you know the person)
- Never follow links in chats (unless you know the person)
You should immediately contact the supposed owner of the website and ask for advice.
Social Phishing
Phishers use other means of getting sensitive data from users. We all know that we should contact the company if we have doubts about a website. What if you would receive a mail from your bank asking you to call them back because there was a security breach? Would you call them back?
What if the number was redirecting you to someone in China speaking fluent English? Would you give the person information when asked about personally identifiable information for identification purposes? Sir, we need to make sure that you are indeed our customer. Could you please supply your credit card information so that I can verify your identity?
This is not a huge market yet but it will grow over time.
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You said that Outlook isn’t your main email client, so which is your main one?
I think its thunderbird
It is Mozilla Thunderbird.
Awesome! This actually solved my problem… what a stupid bug.
If this is the same bug that I’ve encountered, there may be another fix: (1) hover over open Outlook item in Taskbar, cursor up to hover over Outlook window item, and right-click; (2) this should give you Restore / Move / Size / Minimize / Maximize — choose Move or Size; (3) use your cursor keys, going arbitrarily N/S/E/W, to try to move or size the Outlook window back into view. Basically, the app behaves as though it were open in a 0x0 window, or at a location that’s offscreen, and this will frequently work to resize and/or move the window. Don’t forget to close while resized/moved, so that Outlook remembers the size/position for next time.
THANK YOU Claude!!! I could get the main window to launch but could not get any other message window to show on the desktop. You are my hero!!!!
Solved my issue! 6 years later and this is still problem…
Fantastic. Thank you. Size did the trick.
This solved my Outlook problem, too. Thank you. :)
Thank you so much, this started happening to me today and was causing big problems. You are a life saver, I hope I can help you in some way some day.
You are a god – thank you!
thanks a lot…. work like charm.. :-)
Yah…thanks Claude. I’ve been having the same problem and tried all the suggestions…your solution was the answer. It had resized itself to a 0/0 box. Cheers
Excellent post. This had me baffled even trying to accurately describe the problem. This fixed it for me.
Thank you
Thanks a lot for the article. Don’t know why it happenend, don’t know how it got fixed, but it was really annoying and now it works :-)
Thanks a lot. I was facing this issue from past 3 week. I tried everything but no resolution. The issue was happening intermittently and mainly when I was changing the display of screen ( as i use 2 monitors). The only option i had was to do system restore. But thanks to you.
I’ve been tried to sole this problem for 12hours. Your comment about changing the display of screen helped me a lot!! Thanks!!
Thank you…don’t know why this happened but your instructions helped me fix it. Running Windows 10 and office pro 2007
Great tip! Thanks!
Worked for me, too – thank you!!!
It’s Worked for me, too
thank you very much!
I had a similar issue with Outlook 2013 on Windows 10 and this helped me to fix it. Thank you very much!
Thank you so much. Solved!
Considering you published this in 2012, incredible not been debugged by Microsoft.
Thank you again. M
This problem was faced by only one user logging to TS 2008 r2 using outlook 2010.The issue was resolved.
Thanks.
Great tip. Thank you!!!! If it helps, I had to use the Control Key and the arrow keys at the same time to bring my window back into view. Worked like a charm.
Thank you, this worked !!!!
Man, you are a fucking god. Thanks a lot, what an annoying bug!!
Awesome, this post solved the issue. Many thanks!