Microsoft Helps Anti Phishing Group

Well, finally some good news on the fight for phishers.

Microsoft on Wednesday announced it will donate $46,000 worth of software to an agency fighting "phishing" and will make a full-time analyst available to the group.

The recipient of these contributions is the National Cyber-Forensics and Training Alliance, an organization set up jointly by the FBI, the National White Collar Crime Center, Carnegie Mellon University and West Virginia University.

The Microsoft analyst will help the alliance make sense of data related to Internet crime, including violations of the federal Can-Spam Act, as well as phishing, the software giant said. Additionally, the analyst will work with the group to make sure law enforcement has timely industry data and to help design training programs for police.

The alliance was founded as part of an effort to build a collaborative environment for fighting Internet crime. In a statement, Microsoft said that such efforts are important.

"The tactics of spammers, hackers and other online con artists are becoming increasingly sophisticated, and as a company, Microsoft is dedicating resources to help law enforcement find those responsible for harming consumers," Nancy Anderson, deputy general counsel for the company, said in a statement.

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That is some good news.

I don't understood why they'd put a limit on how much $$ worth of software that they'd offer.

Lets see... they give a couple of media disks and some enterprise CDkeys... they don't have to worry about it. Let the agency make some copys of the CDs and pass them around where needed.

I guess if the CDKey were to get out... it'd be bad.. but doen'st matter anyway.
There is a way to "crack" ANY of the microsoft products if the party is really determined.

Why put a limit on how much software they can get?

Its not like they're loosing any money, and this type of publicity is good for them.

It certainly helps to try to offset some of the security vulnerabilities publicity that make some of the phishing so easy for scammers.