MS, Google, PayPal, Facebook, AOL and LinkedIn along with several other net heavyweights and Bank of America as well as Fidelity Investments are getting together to put an end to phishing.
No new technology, just a new framework for email using SPF (Sender Policy Framework) and DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail). DMARC.org published its guidelines and specification for this new framework.
“What DMARC adds is a policy-based framework of actions and reporting that email providers will follow to act on instructions from enterprise email managers to identify or even block spoofed mail exploiting any enterprise domain name. "We came together to produce a new standard, not a new technology," says McDowell. "This leverages SPF and DKIM, and it puts an end to spoofing, the most common form of email abuse.
"Our goal with the launch of DMARC is we want people to start using it, and improve their email authentication infrastructure," says Adam Dawes, product manager at Google's mail team. "The most widely used tactic for phishing is domain spoofing. It's extremely easy for phishers to take advantage."He said Google is already blocking fraudulent messages based on cooperation through DMARC with Facebook, LinkedIn and PayPal, for example. He said any mailbox hosted by Google has DMARC capabilities with them. Google itself has implemented DMARC "so we can report fraudulent messages that claim to come from Google.com."
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223807/Google_Microsoft_Facebook_Bank_of_America_team_to_wipe_out_phishing?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=1
So far, it’s for large institutions, but ISP’s could deploy this needing a DNS network administrator who knows how to aggregate files to send to provider companies like DMARC who will get the companies to verify the emails are indeed from them.
Thus, phishing through spoofing (the most common crime mode) may be coming to an end.
Source:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9223807/Google_Microsoft_Facebook_Bank_of_America_team_to_wipe_out_phishing?taxonomyId=17&pageNumber=3