On Wed, 2006-06-28 at 18:26 +0100, n3td3v wrote: > I believe the industry coined up "phishing" to make more money out of > social engineering.
So far as I can tell, the term "phishing" was not coined by industry, but by the "phishers" themselves. I remember "phishing" as being the term for people posing as staff, asking for passwords over messaging services of AOL and similar services, 11 or so years ago. Accounts stolen using this method were the "phish" and were traded between "phishers" using this terminology. And I'm sure this isn't the original usage, if anyone can show me something older. One could also argue that "Social Engineering" is just a confusing buzzword for age-old confidence schemes/games people have been pulling for centuries. The single moms and retired couples don't know what "Social Engineering" is any more than "phishing". If anything, "Social Engineering" sounds less threatening/unfamiliar. -- Robert Wesley McGrew http://cse.msstate.edu/~rwm8/ _______________________________________________ Full-Disclosure - We believe in it. Charter: http://lists.grok.org.uk/full-disclosure-charter.html Hosted and sponsored by Secunia - http://secunia.com/
