Armorize Technologies: Crimes use "Edison Chen's nude photos" as a web phishing tool

Saturday, February 23, 2008 

An example of E-mail Phishing.
Image: Andrew Levine.

In a recent press conference by the Ministry of Justice of the Republic of China, Armorize Technologies disclosed details on web-phishing crimes related to the "Edison Chen photo scandal".

The scandal which has become a hot topic in the Chinese-language world - especially in Hong Kong - has seen some governments discipline the public for distributing these related photos.

According to Armorize Technologies, organized crime gangs have distributed malicious code recently masquerading as "Edison's photos" through phishing, e-mail hacking, and peer-to-peer file transfer. Even though Google will attempt to tag these phishing sites as dangerous to a user's computer, there are many instances where the malicious code will not be found by anti-virus software such as Norton AntiVirus, Kaspersky Anti-Virus, Trend Micro Internet Security, and NOD32.

Also in this conference, Armorize described their HackAlert service:

If an Internet user accesses a phishing site controlled by a fraud group, malicious software, which can't be found and scanned by anti-virus software, will be downloaded to a user's computer silently. The software will steal private data, collect information on user's software, and use the computer to attack other websites. Statistics on the spread of malicious code through the Internet by this method indicate that this is major problem; one that is associated with unsafe surfing habits and tools such as P2P software when connecting to the Internet.

Edison Chen had claimed to quit the entertainment industry in Hong Kong, but the (photo) scandal shows yet another information security crisis on the World Wide Web that includes Taiwan.

External links

• Armorize Technologies
• HackAlert