Fighting malware and spam

Phishing attacks reach new high

APWG releases phishing figures for January.

Phishing attacks and password-stealing applications both reached record levels in January 2007 according to the latest report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).

The APWG recorded 29,930 unique phishing reports in January 2007 - an increase of nearly 5% from the previous high, which had been recorded in June 2006.

A total of 135 brands were targeted in January - not a record number, but up nearly 35% on the same time last year. Few will be surprised to learn that financial services is still the industry sector most targeted by phishers, taking the brunt (88.9%) of the attacks recorded. However, the APWG noted an increase in the number of attacks against brokerage companies and international banks and brands, as well as an increase in the number of gambling and social networking sites targeted.

The US, China and Korea hold on to the top three spots in the league table of countries hosting phishing websites, while the top three countries hosting phishing-based keyloggers and trojan downloaders this time were the US, China and France.

Despite the fact that phishing is receiving increasing amounts of media coverage (which one would think would have raised the awareness of the general public to the threat), the phishing business shows little sign of waning. The subject of educating users about phishing will be one of the many subjects discussed at this year's VB conference (VB2007). David Harley and Andrew Lee will ask 'Phish phodder: is user education helping or hindering?'. VB2007 takes place 19-21 September 2007 in Vienna, Austria. The full conference programme and online registration are available here.

01 April 2007

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