Proofpoint Warning: Increase in Holiday Phishing Attacks to Cause a Rash of "Collateral" Denial-of-Service Attacks against Large Corporations

Proofpoint Warning: Increase in Holiday Phishing Attacks to Cause a Rash of "Collateral" Denial-of-Service Attacks against Large Corporations


Subject: A little-publicized side effect to phishing attacks is the
ensuing distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks resulting
from phishing targets hitting the "reply" button on email. With
the enormous increase in phishing attacks this holiday season,
hundreds of large corporations face having their networks shut
down by these "collateral" DDoS attacks.

Date: December 6, 2004



CUPERTINO, Calif. - Dec. 6, 2004 - Every time a phishing "victim" responds to a phishing attack by hitting the "reply" button on their email application, the return email goes to the legitimate business, not the "phisher." This means banks, retailers, credit card companies and other enterprises will be victims of "collateral" DDoS attacks this holiday season in which they are deluged by tens of thousands of emails from would-be phishing victims. This sudden spike in traffic can badly degrade or even shut down corporate networks.

Proofpoint, the fastest growing messaging security vendor in the U.S., has identified nearly 100 new phishing attacks in November alone, representing hundreds of millions of fraudulent emails. The company expects this number to grow substantially in December as the holidays grow closer, thus further intensifying the collateral DDoS attack phenomenon.

Proofpoint's Anti-Spam Lab Phishing Expert, Rami Habal, is available for comment on the "Collateral DDOS Phenomenon." If you would like to arrange an interview, please contact:

Andy Murphy
SparkSource, Inc.
(781) 274-6061 ext. 208
pr@proofpoint.com

PRNewswire -- Dec. 6


Source: Proofpoint, Inc.

Web site: http://www.proofpoint.com/


-------
Profile: intent