Friday, May 15, 2009

New slang spawned from phish

It's new to me at least: whaling

(from Steve Jobs' Amazon account hacked?)

If the rumor is true, Jobs would be the latest victim in a string of "whaling" attacks aimed at corporate executives, legal firms, government agencies and other high-value targets. iDefence has reported over 15,000 victims in the past 15 months, saying the hackers would target bank account information to net "millions of dollars."


I like how intuitive it is.

And of course Grant Barrett has already got it in his net.

offered up by Wishydig at 06:48 Labels: ,

2 comments:

  1. Justin22 May, 2009 08:25

    Hmm. I think this term is inevitable. I feel like I've heard similar long, long before in hacker jargon.

    I would point out that among casino workers big spenders are called "whales", with the term also finding use among con artists for wealthy targets, so the origin of the usage might have less to do with the term "phishing" than would be immediately assumed.

    ReplyDelete
  2. eplough29 May, 2009 13:50

    Phish is constantly a source of inspiration.

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for reaching out.

You can also contact me at wishydig[at]gmail[d0t]com.

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)