Every single day roughly 3,000 UK web users were sent a phishing attack between 2012 and 2013, triple the levels seen between 2011 and 2012.
That’s according to a new Kaspersky Lab’s report, “the evolution of phishing attacks”, revealing what was once a subset of spam has grown into its own category of cyber attack. The most targeted websites were Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Amazon, with Facebook and Yahoo overwhelmingly ahead as targeted sites.
Worldwide, attacks reached an average of 102,100 people each day, with the most common targets being web users in Russia, the United States, India, Vietnam and the UK. Most servers hosting the phishing pages were registered in the USA, the UK, Germany. Russia and India.
Kaspersky discovered that half of all identified attack sources came from only 10 countries, signifying there is quite a small number of preferred regions from which to launch the attacks.
20 percent of phishing attacks were set up to mimic banks or financial organisations.
Kaspersky’s deputy CTO for research, Nikiti Shvetsov, said the enormous increase shows that phishing is not just a subset for spammers. “These attacks are relatively simple to organise and are demonstrably effective, attracting an increasing number of cybercriminals,” Shvetsov said.
