There is an interesting article over at PC World about a group that may be responsible for the vast majority of phishing scams currently in the wild, or at least responsible for making it easier for third parties to devise and execute such scams.
Security experts guess that Rock Phish is run by an extremely small group of technically savvy criminals--probably about a dozen hackers--who set up the phishing Web sites, manage the domain name registration, and ensure that the stolen financial information is funneled into a central server, which researchers call the "Mother Ship."
This group then sells the credit card and banking information in Internet-based chat rooms to a much wider range of money launderers who actually extract money from these accounts, according to researchers who asked not to be identified.
Even ten years ago, this would have sounded like the plot of a Michael Crichton novel. Twenty years ago, it would have been a John Brunner or William Gibson tale. But it's reality; we're living with it right now, and dealing with its troubling consequences.
Scary, innit?
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