the Rice Thresher

Issue date: 8/22/08 Section: News

Rice phishing attempts have also gotten more sophisticated over the last few months, Scarborough said. While an early attack in February had Rice's address, an attack last month included the address, copyright, former campaign slogan "Unconventional Wisdom" in the footer and phrases from the www.rice.edu Web site. He said one phishing attack contained a fake message supposedly signed by IT Director of Communications Carlyn Chatfield, suggesting the scammers had familiarized themselves with the IT staff at Rice to make their messages look more authentic.

"Scammers take time to personalize these attacks so people are more likely to respond to these e-mails," Scarborough said.

Since the phishing messages are sent from a non-Rice spam e-mail account, the subject of the messages are marked with asterisks and the "spam" label, but the bodies of the e-mails are so convincing that many students volunteer their personal information anyway, Scarborough said.

Scarborough estimates that at least two separate groups are responsible for the phishing attacks so far.

When a phishing attack is reported, IT blocks that e-mail address from sending messages to any other rice.edu e-mail accounts. And if an account is taken over by scammers, which typically send out an uncharacteristically high frequency of e-mail, IT freezes the account until the correct user changes his or her password for security. Scarborough said it is hard to monitor what accounts are being used for scamming purposes, however, as students and faculty might just be sending more e-mails than usual. He also said anti-spam technology for outbound Rice e-mail was discussed, though because this tool would slow down the Web site considerably, it is not a serious option.

Scarborough encourages students, faculty and staff to not respond to any phishing attempts to supply personal information online.

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