Computer and Information Security Handbook, 2nd Edition

Chapter e49

Identity Theft

Markus Jakobsson,    Palo Alto Research Center

Alex Tsow^†,    The MITRE Corporation

Identity theft is commonly defined as unwanted appropriation of access credentials that allows creation and access of accounts and that allows the aggressor to pose as the victim. Phishing is a type of identity theft that is perpetrated on the Internet and that typically relies on social engineering to obtain the access credentials of the victim. Similar deceit techniques are becoming increasingly common in the context of crimeware. Crimeware, in turn, is often defined as economically motivated malware. Whereas computer science has a long-term tradition of studying and understanding security threats, the human component of the problem ...