Digital PhishNet Initiative Announced by ISPs, Federal Agencies

Microsoft, AOL, Earthlink, and several other industry giants, along with the FBI, the FTC, the U.S. Secret Service, and the USPS announced today the formation of Digital PhishNet, a collaborative initiative designed to
take phishers down by arresting and convicting them.

“The key to stopping phishers and bringing them to justice is to identify
and target them quickly,” said Dan Larkin, unit chief at the FBI’s Internet
Crime Complaint Center (IC3). “Phishers create and dismantle these phony
sites very, very fast, stockpiling credit card numbers, passcodes and other
personal financial information over the course of just a couple of days, in
order to avoid detection. Digital PhishNet is a powerful response to this
type of online fraud because it facilitates critical data collection between
a large number of the targets of these crimes - those who are on the front
lines of the fight against phishing - and establishes a pipeline directly to
law enforcement, in real time, before the phisher has had time to disappear
back into the anonymity of cyberspace.”… [Continued...]