Phishing Is A Serious Business – If You Didn’t Already Know

By admin | May 19, 2009 | Leave a Comment 

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Twenty five percent of all phishing URLs were generated using phishing toolkits in April, according to Symantec’s State of Phishing Report. Symantec State of Phishing Report

Symantec also observed that 75 percent of the total attacks were from unique phishing web sites, which included more than 227 known brands being targeted by phishers. The unique attacks increased by 25 per cent from the previous month. However, of the total phishing attacks, there was no increase observed in unique phishing websites from the previous month as a result of the proportionate increase observed in the toolkit activity in the month.

Key highlights from the report include:

• The Phisher King: Phishing toolkits continued to professionalise fraud attacks. Symantec observed 25% of phishing URLs to be generated using phishing toolkits. Although there was a 19% increase in the toolkit attacks over the previous month, the proportion of toolkit attacks remained constant of the total phishing attacks observed in the month.

• Good Hosts Fry Phish: More than 113 web hosting services were used, which accounted for 9% of all phishing attacks. Although web hosting companies continued to improve their phishing mitigation tactics, phishing attacks using web hosting services increased by 5% from the previous month. However when looking at the total number of phishing attacks observed in the month, the proportion of phishing attacks using web hosting services actually decreased compared to the previous month.

• Phishing in International Waters: Among the non-English phishing sites, French language phishing sites were most frequently recorded followed by sites in Italian and Chinese language. A total of 3,650 non-English phishing sites were recorded in the month of April. This is an increase of 5% from the previous month. A rise in the non-English phishing sites in April can be the result of a slight increase in the total volume of phishing sites observed by Symantec, over the previous month.

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