APWG Report Reveals that Phishing Increase by more than 20% during Q3 - 2013

According to a recent report issued by APWG (Anti-Phishing Working Group), quantity of phishing campaign with crimeware attacks evolved and proliferated in excess of 20% in Q3-2013.

The new phishing Activity Trends Report quotes latest Trends Report of APWG as the overall number of distinctive phishing web sites rose to 143,353 during last July-September which is more than the previous quarter's 119,101.

Cutimes.com published a report on 12th February, 2014 quoting Ihab Shraim, Chief Information Security Officer of MarkMonitor and an Analyst contributing to Trends Report, as saying that the fraudsters look for gains and zoomed on the brands that deliver maximum returns.

The APWG clarified that there was a decline of 8% in number of brands targeted by phishers i.e. from unsurpassed high of 441 in April-2013 to 379 in September-2013 but overall volume has increased due to growing attacks on money-transfer and retail/e-commerce websites.

According to AWPG latest report, more than 31% of computers globally are tainted by some malware during third quarter which is slightly less on quarterly basis.

However, the happy news, as accords to the report is that Europe enjoys having the least amount of infection stats with UK having 20.35% of computers following Germany-20.6% and the Netherlands-19.19%.

Scmagazineuk.com published a report on 12th February, 2014 with email and Internet security major AppRiver's Senior Security Analyst, Troy Gill as saying that malware purveyor, phishers and fraudsters have used recognized brand for long to earn legitimacy for their malicious software/malware) and phishing operations but since past few months his team-members have observed an increase in spam activity and surge in emails with malware. Both these groups rely greatly on posing assured brands to dupe users into opening their emails and following links. Few of the popular brands used are facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn, UPS/Fedex, key banks and providers of credit card.

Experts feel that especially organizations should be concerned about phishing because cybercriminals and adversaries used them in their method and infiltrate them and hence organizations need to install necessary security tools to avert criminals. In addition to this, organizations should educate their employees about the ill-effects of phishing, the report suggests.

» SPAMfighter News - 2/24/2014