Phishing scam affecting the New York Times

Dec 12, 2007 19:36 GMT  ·  By

The phishing attacks are probably some of the illegal activities able to cause the most important damage to us, because they are usually attempting to steal login credentials. Obviously, this information could be related to all kinds of accounts including emails, servers and bank accounts. Because of that, it's very important to install a security solution and keep it up-to-date, as long as you are connected to the Internet.

However, some of the users may ignore this advice and can easily become victims of phishers. Another victim appears to be a "New York Times" employee from the Baghdad Bureau. Kevin Roderick, of LA Observed, published a memo which apparently informed us that the email of the Baghdad Bureau of the NYT was compromised and might be used for conducting other attacks.

"The Baghdad Bureau e-mail address nytiraqb[at]yahoo.com has been compromised and will no longer be used. Please remove it from your address books or e-mail directories. Use extreme caution if you receive any e-mails purporting to be from Yahoo (either yahoo.com or yahoo-inc.com) and claiming that a password has recently been changed or that you need to confirm an e- mail address. In a few rare instances such messages are genuine, but most are bogus", it is mentioned in the memo according to LA Observed.

"Do not be fooled -- the account is being used by unauthorized persons. If you receive a communication from the Baghdad Bureau and you question its authenticity, you can always phone the bureau to confirm it..."

Although the issue has not been confirmed yet, I can't understand one thing: as you can see, the compromised email is hosted by Yahoo, the owner of other million emails. I think everyone would expect to see an email hosted by the main New York Times webpage and not one ending in yahoo.com. So, if anybody has more information about this matter, let us know what happened with the email and if this is report is really true.