Phishing messages attempt to convince a user to reveal personal
\ninformation, such as computer passwords or bank account and credit
\ncard details. Phishing messages can be seen as a sort of intelligence
\ntest.
\n
\nVirus messages are more dangerous because they attempt to „infect“
\na user’s computer by installing software to steal passwords or credit
\ncard details, to seize control of the computer, or to rob a user’s
\nbank account.<\/p>\n
The virus\/phishing defense mechanism used by most Swiss universities,
\nis dependent upon the presence of so-called „signatures“ used by the
\nscanning software.<\/p>\n
A signature is basically a fragment of the virus or phishing message.
\nA virus or phishing message must be received by a large number of
\npeople before it comes to the attention of an anti-virus organization
\nand a signature is created.<\/p>\n
We have anti-virus software on our mail gateways, on the central Exchange
\nmail server and on individual work stations. Even with this three-layer
\ndefense, work stations still get infected.<\/p>\n
Since mid-summer, Swiss universities received several waves of e-mail
\nmessages containing virus or phishing messages. Since these messages
\nwere specifically directed at the universities, the number of recipients
\nwas relatively small and no signatures were available at the time of the
\nattack.<\/p>\n
We have responded to these attacks by creating our own signatures and
\nsharing them with the other universities.<\/p>\n
We are currently working on a faster response mechanism to handle
\nvirus\/phishing waves and investigating ways to quickly identify
\ninfected computers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Phishing messages attempt to convince a user to reveal personal information, such as computer passwords or bank account and credit card details. Phishing messages can be seen as a sort of intelligence test.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":974,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1179],"tags":[1330,1328,1329],"class_list":["post-70","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mail-web","tag-phishing","tag-spam","tag-viren"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/974"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=70"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/70\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=70"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=70"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethz.ch\/id\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=70"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}