How the Epsilon Breach Might Affect Your Campaigns

PushSend · May 25, 2011

I'm a big fan of this source, this is another solid piece of news/information from them!

"The recent Epsilon breach that exposed millions of email addresses has the potential to create a very big problem for all email marketers and will demand development of new best practices in the world of email marketing," writes Candyce Edelen at PropelGrowth.

Although the phishing danger is most pronounced for banks and brokerages with retail-facing business, fallout from the attack affects everyone, especially for the following reasons:

Hackers captured email addresses, company names and full customer names. "This enables a much more effective fraud tactic called 'spear phishing,'" Edelen explains. "The fraudsters know that jdoe[at an email address] is John Doe who has an account with Citibank." With that much information, a phisher's message sounds far more convincing.

Phishers are producing better content. Phishing used to be easy to spotâ€”badly designed email rife with grammatical errors, strange syntax and odd requests. But, reasons Edelen, "If the hackers that broke into Epsilon's database knew what they were stealing and are planning spear phishing attacks, then it's likely that fraudsters using this data are going to get more sophisticated in their approaches."

Repeated warnings have made customers leery of legitimate messages. "The affected Epsilon clients rushed to inform their subscribers of the breach and tell them to be suspicious of any email purported to come from them," Edenlen notes. But that approach could work too well. For instance, a routine transactional email with a new call to action mightâ€”mistakenlyâ€”raise a red flag.

The Point: Arm yourself. Whatever your product or service, it's important to develop best practices that address the ramifications of attacks like the one against Epsilon.
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source: MarketingProfs.com

roundabout · May 25, 2011

The hackers and black hats have ruined it for us from the beginning. They buy CD-ROMS and grab suppression lists and proxy them into zip submits, they're the real dark side to what should be a standardized and harmonious marketing business.

They need to eat hot death.

DKPMO · May 27, 2011

roundabout said: ↑

The hackers and black hats have ruined it for us from the beginning. They buy CD-ROMS and grab suppression lists and proxy them into zip submits, they're the real dark side to what should be a standardized and harmonious marketing business.

They need to eat hot death.
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That's not even the worst thing.

The worst of all is lots of people (including lots of ISPs) automatically assume that most bulk mailers are hackers, scammers and spammers.

This is really hurting the credibility and the influence of the email marketing industry.

PushSend · May 31, 2011

UPDATE: The Spam has started!

And so it begins!

First Apparent Epsilon-Related Spam Reported

5/31/11 By Ken Magill

And so it has apparently begun.

The first case of spam that can be reasonably attributed to the well-publicized Epsilon data breach has been reported.

And there is evidence that whoever is sending the messages is no amateur.

According to Laura Atkins, principal at email deliverability consultancy Word to the Wise, she received two phishing emails yesterday to a uniquely tagged email address she supplied to Chase.
â€œThat was an address that received a message in the beginning of April that said Epsilon had been hacked,â€ Atkins said.

Chase was one of more than 20 companies that sent messages to its customers in April saying its email service provider, Epsilon, had suffered a data breach and that customer names and email addresses may have been compromised.

Until now, there were no reported cases of spam that could be clearly linked to Epsilonâ€™s breach.
Atkins, however, for professional reasons supplies each email list to which she subscribes a unique email address so she can tell if a particular list is being sold or has been compromised.

She said her unique Chase address received an Adobe phishing attempt, where the message says Adobe updates are available and urges the recipient to click through to a malicious site.
The address also received a phishing email claiming that peer-to-peer file sharing site LimeWire has been shut down and offering links to so-called alternatives which are also malicious Web sites.
â€œThe interesting thing is people who use LimeWire are probably infected with a bunch of stuff anyway because theyâ€™re out there downloading anything that looks interesting,â€ she said.

And even more disturbing, the messages came from the servers of a well-known email service provider, according to Atkins.

â€œThe mail came through a different ESP and it looks like that ESP had a customer that was compromised because it came through a customer account,â€ she said.

She declined to name the ESP.

â€œI respect them, so Iâ€™d rather not,â€ she said.

According to Atkins, it appears the spammer or spammers gained access to a customer account of the well-known ESP, uploaded an unknown number of email addresses and used the customer account to send the spam.

Using a hacked ESP customer account is apparently a way to use that customerâ€™s clean email reputation to get the spam delivered.

Atkinsâ€™ husband, Steve, who also has email addresses uniquely tagged to some Epsilon customers, has received no spam at those addresses, said Atkins.

â€œIâ€™m not sure if the list has been broken up and sold off in pieces â€¦ or if theyâ€™re just uploading parts of it,â€ she said.
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source: MagillReport.com

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How the Epsilon Breach Might Affect Your Campaigns

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