Yet another CalMail phishing attempt

bkpark — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:23:18 +0000

Still fairly obvious, but it looks like phishers are getting better. Below is the email with full-headers (headers revealing my secret email server setup redacted):

Envelope-to: xxx...@xxxxxx.xxx
Delivery-date: Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:19:26 -0800
Message-ID: <2010...@webmail.uni-potsdam.de>
Date: Sun, 21 Feb 2010 06:00:52 +0100
From: "Berkeley.edu Web-Administration" <webm...@berkeley.edu>
Reply-to: supp...@live.com
To: undisclosed-recipients: ;
Subject: Alert: Update your CalMail  account
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
        charset=ISO-8859-1;
        DelSp="Yes";
        format="flowed"
Content-Disposition: inline
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
User-Agent: Internet Messaging Program (IMP) H3 (4.1.6)

--

Dear CalMail User,

Your email account needs to be upgraded with our new F-Secure® HTK4S
anti-virus/anti-spam 2010 version.
Fill the columns below and click reply to send back or your account will be
suspended temporary from our services.

CalNet ID:
Passphrase:
Phone Number:

Berkeley.edu Web-Administration
Greg Silva

https://calmail.berkeley.edu/

----©2010, University Of California.

Note the fairly convincing From: address. A lot of the suspicious routing information will be hidden by most email clients, however, the Reply-to: header (which would route the email to supp...@live.com and which the phishing relies on) should be set to visible by most email clients, which means, yet again, people who pay attention to details shouldn’t be taken in by this rather amateurish phishing attempt.

Not to mention one should never send passphrases over email—even if you know the recipient; email is transmitted in clear text between servers and is inherently insecure.

Calmail leaks IP addresses!

bkpark — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 09:43:47 +0000

For regular visitors of my blog from UCB, here’s an early ~~holiday~~ Christmas present to you: Calmail leaks IP addresses! Here’s a quick demonstration (I’ve seen similar headers on emails from friends and colleagues, but I didn’t want to expose their info; I’ve redacted some info here as I didn’t want to expose my … secret email server scheme, or my real username for Calmail):

Envelope-to: bkp...@xxxxxx.xxx
Delivery-date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:32:12 -0800
MIME-Version: 1.0
Date: Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:32:05 -0800
From: "Byung Kyu Park, BA" <xxxx...@berkeley.edu>
To: bkp...@byungkyupark.com
Subject: This will demonstrate how Calmail leaks IP addresses
Message-ID: <7272...@berkeley.edu>
User-Agent: RoundCube Webmail/0.3-RC1.UCB3
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
        boundary="=_ad4b95d1d25a334cada12ae4c3335783"

Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="UTF-8"

And this email was composed on the RoundCube webmail client.

Andrew

You will see that the detailed email header (which most email clients hide, but there is always an option to show full headers) reveals the IP from which I was accessing Calmail’s webmail interface (no, I’m not in the lab right now; but I am proxying through one of my servers, because I consider my current IP address a confidential, personal, private information). Similar headers show if you use SMTP protocol or if you use the other webmail.

I am not entirely sure if this is a feature or bug—embedding IP information in headers will help with legitimate activities of law enforcement authorities, as well as illegitimate (is there any other kind?) squelching of dissenting voices—so I haven’t reported it to abu...@berkeley.edu or, I don’t know, h...@berkeley.edu? secu...@berkeley.edu?

In any case, now that you know, now you can avoid using Calmail—if you value your privacy.

Ironically, GMail may be one of the most secure email system to use, as far as privacy goes, because headers from GMail is fairly clean from any private information. Or, I guess if you are like me, you run a computer server at work, on which you run a bunch of things like websites and email servers so whose IP address isn’t exactly a state secret. You can proxy everything through that server (like I did here) or run your mail clients and what-not on that server.

No matter what you do, just remember: when you send an email through Calmail, you announce to your recipient what your IP address is at that moment. Don’t send that email if you are not comfortable with that.

Byung Kyu Park's Personal Website » calmail

Yet another CalMail phishing attempt

Calmail leaks IP addresses!