The nearly 150,000,000 emails flowing through our filters every week can sometimes serve as a barometer for our web psyche. Consider the following:
Politics
For the past week, we have seen
* 4,719 emails with Stimulus Package in the body of the email
* 229 emails with Economic Depression in the body of the email
* 328 with McCain in the email body
* 2,099 emails with Palin in the body of the email
Phishing A New Detective Control to Preempt Phishing Attacks
Searching on the connecting IP address (the verified address of the last "hop") we were able to link five phishing attacks against five DIFFERENT banks over a 7 day period starting on January 26, 2009.
While a single IP address did not guarantee a single culprit, the text inside the email was sufficiently similar to rule out coincidence.
The referral URLs, FROM address, and subject were all distinct - and so the only way to link them was through the IP address.
Banks can use attacks against other institutions to preempt attacks on their own clients.
Law enforcement can use this mechanism to expand prosecution.
Brand & Reputation Management
Over a one week period in February 2009, qi-fense had access to the following: