Applications of Computing in Industry : Lecture

How would you create the perfect phishing attack? Phishing is a lucrative business - attacks rose by 12% between 2011 and 2012, costing the financial industry an estimated £40m. As detection improves, attackers have to come up with novel methods to evade security companies.

In this talk, we'll look at how you might try to create the 'perfect' phishing attack for fun and profit. The lifespan and effectiveness of your attack will depend on a number of factors: location, target and complexity. We'll examine some of the more interesting attacks we have recently faced and discuss how some technical complexity in an attack can greatly improve the odds of being able to successfully evade detection and takedown.

Finally, we'll look at some of the ways we're going beyond detection and takedown to identify and pursue the people behind the attacks.

Feroz graduated from Imperial with an MEng in Computing in 2012. He works as a software developer on Netcraft's anti-phishing services, specifically on the takedown of phishing websites.