Phishing up 180 percent in six months

Davey Winder
Saturday, 26 July 2008 18:01

Business IT - Security

He suggests that reuse is an important factor, with the same carefully crafted scam messages being used again and again. "Attackers have honed their emails in terms of grammar, content and layout (often pulling in genuine graphics from the bank they are spoofing)" Day warns, adding that they are "just changing the domain or website link displayed when you click on the link."

And while phishing sites and links are usually shut down once the fake site has been identified, Day reckons that cybercriminals are getting more successful in tricking users "by using either trial domains or other legitimate genuine sites that have been compromised or hacked into."

User awareness is also an issue, as financial and government bodies step up the education campaign to mirror the increases in phishing scams. "As such the volume of phishing emails must increase to target users who are not as savvy or aware of these threats" Day concludes.

The APACS data highlights the volume of incidents reported, but not the number of people that have fallen victim to phishing scams. "The increase in the number of incidents highlights that through better education and protection technology, people are becoming better able to deal with the problem" says Day.

In its recent McAfee Spam Experiment the company found that some 8 percent of spam being received by UK participants was of the phishing variety. A much lower percentage than experienced by participants from other countries. But the UK should not be complacent as online banking becomes commonplace so, as those APACS figures reveal, the problem is likely to get worse.

"Brazil commonly seems to be a high phishing target as they were an early implementer of online banking" Day reports, concluding "As we see online banking usage increase in the UK, we expect to see increases in the number of phishing emails, as the opportunity for the cybercriminal grows."