Phishtank Casts Its Net For Malicious Email

Dennis Fisher of SearchSecurity.com writes:

A new information clearinghouse for data on phishing attacks is up and running, and unlike similar efforts at other sites, PhishTank includes an open API that enables contributors to submit and access data through various applications.

The new site is not only an archive of suspected and confirmed phishing emails, but it also includes a feature that allows other registered users to examine submissions and verify that they are in fact malicious mailings. This collaborative format is a bit different from the work done by other groups, such as the Anti-Phishing Working Group, which focuses on compiling statistics on phishing and pharming attacks and aiding law enforcement agencies in taking down malicious sites.

PhishTank launched on Tuesday and by Thursday morning Eastern time, the site had received 752 submissions, 447 of which were verified as phish, according to the site’s statistics page. [Source: SearchSecurity.com]