An antispam researcher has uncovered a phishing scam that uses computers belonging to both a medical transcription outsourcing company and the government of Malaysia.The scam was discovered by Bill Carton, an engineer based in San Diego who has spent the past 10 years as a volunteer antispam activist, shutting down bulk e-mailers in his spare time. Carton received an e-mail Friday morning that purported to be from eBay’s PayPal service. It read like a standard phishing pitch: “It has come to our attention that your account information needs to be updated,” the e-mail said. “If you could please take 5-10 minutes out of your online experience and update your personal records, you will not run into any future problems with the online service.”What was unusual, however, was the fact that the link in the e-mail was to a fake PayPal site hosted by servers in the Malaysian government’s gov.my domain. “This one was interesting because of the Malaysian angle. A government server usually gets my attention,” Carton said.Closer investigation revealed that computers from another trusted source had been used to send out the phishing e-mail. “The compromised mail server used to relay the spam, and scrub off any evidence of where the spammer is, was not the typical home cable customer with a zombie infection, but Rxdocuments.com,” Carton said. “They boast of having HIPAA-compliant software for patient privacy, but they were compromised and used as a spam-spewing relay. How trustworthy is that?” Paul Laudanski, owner of Computer Cops and the leader of the Phishing Incident Reporting and Termination squad project, examined the phishing e-mail and agreed it appeared to have been relayed by Rxdocuments. Rxdocuments.com provides dictation transcription services for physicians. It bills its products as “cost-effective, secure transcription adhering to the highest professional, ethical and legal standards,” according to the company’s website.Neither Rxdocuments.com nor the government of Malaysia responded to requests for comment. Rxdocuments.com is headquartered in Miami, but the website is registered to RxDocuments in Bangalore, India, according to the Whois database. This is not the first time that the gov.my website been used by phishers, according to Laudanski. It has been used at least four other times since April of this year to spoof brands such as Chase, Citibank and eBay, he said.Phishers have become increasingly sophisticated as criminals have realized that there is real money to be made in online fraud. Research company Gartner estimates that U.S. consumers will lose US$2.8 billion to phishing in 2006, with the average attack netting $1,244. “There’s definitely more of it than we’ve seen ever,” said Dave Jevans, chairman of the Anti-Phishing Working Group. “Spam has gone up hugely in the last two months, and the volume of phishing has gone up with that,” he said.Jevans agreed that this latest PayPal scam is unusual. “It’s interesting because it’s basically two entities that you would think would have security nailed down,” he said. -Robert McMillan, IDG News Service (San Francisco Bureau)(PC World’s Erik Larkin contributed to this story.) Related Link: Antiphishing Fighters Target MalwareCheck out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content brandpost Sponsored by DataStax Ask yourself: How can genAI put your content to work? Generative AI applications can readily be built against the documents, emails, meeting transcripts, and other content that knowledge workers produce as a matter of course. By Bryan Kirschner Dec 04, 2023 5 mins Machine Learning Artificial Intelligence feature The CIO’s new role: Orchestrator-in-chief CIOs have unique insight into everything that happens in a company. Some are using that insight to take on a more strategic role. By Minda Zetlin Dec 04, 2023 12 mins CIO C-Suite Business IT Alignment opinion Fortifying the bridge between tech and business in the C-suite To be considered a tech-forward company today, there has to be a focus on tech fluency across the C-suite, which creates a unique opportunity for CIOs to uplevel their roles and expand their footprint across the enterprise. By Diana Bersohn and Rachel Barton Dec 04, 2023 7 mins CIO Business IT Alignment IT Strategy brandpost Sponsored by G42 Understanding the impact of AI on society, environment and economy By Jane Chan Dec 03, 2023 4 mins Artificial Intelligence Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe