Decoding a detailed phishing scam

There's a must read article about phishing online at the Washington Post today. Security Fix blogger, Brian Krebs, dissects a detailed and highly sophisticated phishing attack involving the Mountain America credit union in Salt Lake City. This spear phishing attack includes masked credit card numbers that appear to be real (only the first five numbers appear, all of which are the same on any Mountain America credit cards).

What made this scam unique is that the fraudsters even applied for and received a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) encryption certificate (much like a VeriSign certificate) for their fake website. So even if you were suspicious enough to investigate the site's authenticity, you would probably determine that it was not a phishing scam. Click here to read more details about this sophisticated phishing case.