New Internet banking message phishing email

New Internet banking message phishing email

A new type of phishing scam hit our email filters this week. This one is very simple; it just reads “You have a new Internet banking message”. The email is targeting ANZ customers. Regardless of the simplicity of the message, this is another phishing email.

You can see from looking at Figure A that this email relies heavily on looking authentic. There are realistic ANZ logos contained in the email. The subject line of the email reads “You have an Important ANZ Message Notification”. The sender of the email is “ANZ”. There is no greeting as such. The email contains one link. The link is attached to the button labelled “Log on”. A standard type of footer is attached to the email, with website terms of use and a privacy agreement.

There is not much else to this email. It is relying on its subject line to entice users to view the email. The authentic looking ANZ logo is intended to further entice users to click on the link contained in the email. We suspect that the heading of “ANZ Message Notification” followed by the line “You have a new Internet banking message” may also be enough to entice some people to at least click on the link in the email.

As you might guess, the main sign this is a phishing email is the link. Mousing over it reveals that it leads to a phishing site. The phishing site is designed to steal your banking logon credentials.

Although this appears to be a simple phishing email, remember that criminals do send these types of phishing emails out in high volumes. Even if only 1% of the targets respond by clicking on a link and entering their details, that still equates to 100 victims if the criminals send out 10,000 emails. Many millions, or hundreds of millions, of emails per spam campaign are typically sent.

Delete this email if you receive it.

Scott Reeves
MailShark
Free anti-spam service
Free email filter service