Cyveillance - Phishing Attacks Increased June-Aug 09

Cyveillance, a world leader in cyber intelligence, declared a major rise in phishing attacks over the period spanning from June to August 2009, as per the news report of PR WEB on September 22, 2009.

Cyveillance's report stated that there were 176,846 phishing related campaigns over the three month period (June-August 2009), and only 31.5% of newly recognized phishing attacks were actually noticed.

However, claims made by Cyveillance report on phishing contradict those made by other security giants like IBM, Symantec and Microsoft, who claimed a reduction in overall phishing attacks in 2009.

Cyveillance said - the cause for dissimilarity in opinion is the industry (that includes other cyber security vendors) has focused on conventional e-mail based phishing attacks which are not preferred by today's more thriving phishers.

Traditional e-mail monitoring overlook attacks committed through new creative ways which include URLs circulation by SMS, instant messages and tweets.

While the volume of phishing e-mail may have reduced, the number of phishing cases is actually increasing through sophisticated methods of identifying and hitting targets.

Similarly, phishing campaigns and malware attacks on social networks (Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter) moved into the mainstream attacks.

Panos Anastassiadis, President and CEO of Cyveillance, said - there has been an usual evolution of attacks over the years, which started with malware on floppy disks, succeeding to mails, sites and now other avenues which include Facebook, Twitter and cellular phones, as reported by PR WEB on September 22, 2009.

Anastassiadis also claims that the phishing has not changed but phishers have become more competitive in initiating their attacks. Thus, users should know that these threats are not restricted to easy spam mail campaigns.

Identifying the extent of threat, Cyveillance cautions people who use Internet for varied purposes (banking, transactions) to be alert as no silver bullets will safeguard them against phishing attacks. Thus, it is crucial for users that they should not only depend on security solutions but remain aware about latest and emerging threats as phishing still backs on human interaction to seize personal information.

Related article: Cyveillance Ranks US as the Top Malware Distributor in H1 2009

» SPAMfighter News - 10/16/2009