RE: Symptoms vs. Causes

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> > So much for typing. How about selecting password letters 
> from dropdown 
> > boxes, or from an image map with scrambled letters that was sent to 
> > the browser.
> 
> Sorry, what about these? They have essentially the same 
> security properties as cleartext passwords.

One would hope that all communication from the browser to the server is encrypted as in SSL regardless of whether passwords go in cleartext or whether there is some Javascript to encrypt them first. In that case, the big issue is keylogging software that has been widely installed by malware distributed by Phishing organizations. Key-stroke loggers do not look at mouse-clicks.

> Second, it doesn't take that many phishing attacks to extract 
> most of the secret word.

Depends on length of said word/phrase. Also, I can see how naïve people are fooled by the first email, but surely the percentage who would click on each successive email, decreases.

At the end of the day, phishing is a social problem, not a technical problem. It can't be solved by purely technical means. All technical solutions to phishing involve some form of behavior change.

You've mentioned man-in-the-middle attacks. Such attacks cannot be prevented if the user interface requires cleartext inputs. Remember, this is not like typical cryptography MITM attacks where the MITM receives an ecrypted stream and is able to decrypt it, modify it, and reencrypt it. In this case, the user asks the MITM to provide a web page and associated Javascript. While the look of this page will be identical to the bank's page, the functionality does not need to be identical. It can send everything cleartext to the MITM who them emulates the human user.

To defeat MITM you need a secure channel, but how can you establish a secure channel to a human being who has already defeated the bank's security system by enlisting the phishing organization as their agent?

I would rather see the focus of effort go to building simple embedded computer systems that one can plug into a USB port and rely on to establish an encrypted channel to the bank. That way, the human user does not play any significant role in establishing the channel of communication and cannot subvert the process.

--Michael Dillon

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