Phishing figures show rise in Trojans
An article in Computerworld offers mixed news about phishing.
"The latest figures from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) offer cold comfort for anyone concerned about phishing. Although the number of attacks seems to have reached a plateau, phishing e-mails appear to be getting more sophisticated. In March, the total number of unique phishing e-mails reported to the organization was 13,353, a 2% increase on the figure for February. Although the volume of phishing e-mails has increased dramatically in the space of the last year -- mostly in the month of December -- the number has shown a marked leveling off in February and March and could now have peaked for the time being. In place of volume, however, there appears to be an increase in the breadth and sophistication of attacks. During March, the number of unique phishing sites increased 6.9% to 2,870, while the number of brands hijacked went up to 78 from 64 in the previous month."
"The APWG has started analyzing different types of phishing attacks and is now able to provide some sketchy figures that chart the rise of Trojan-based key-logging. Between November and December of 2004, when it started tracking them, the number of new key-loggers was running at one or two new variants per week, hosted on 10 to 15 new Web sites per week. By February and March, this had risen to eight to 10 key-loggers per week from around 100 Web sites. These attacks are initiated in a number of ways. In addition to the conventional e-mail routine, which invites e-mail users to click on a link to a Trojan-infected site, scammers are now using instant messaging to issue invites."
"The latest figures from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) offer cold comfort for anyone concerned about phishing. Although the number of attacks seems to have reached a plateau, phishing e-mails appear to be getting more sophisticated. In March, the total number of unique phishing e-mails reported to the organization was 13,353, a 2% increase on the figure for February. Although the volume of phishing e-mails has increased dramatically in the space of the last year -- mostly in the month of December -- the number has shown a marked leveling off in February and March and could now have peaked for the time being. In place of volume, however, there appears to be an increase in the breadth and sophistication of attacks. During March, the number of unique phishing sites increased 6.9% to 2,870, while the number of brands hijacked went up to 78 from 64 in the previous month."
"The APWG has started analyzing different types of phishing attacks and is now able to provide some sketchy figures that chart the rise of Trojan-based key-logging. Between November and December of 2004, when it started tracking them, the number of new key-loggers was running at one or two new variants per week, hosted on 10 to 15 new Web sites per week. By February and March, this had risen to eight to 10 key-loggers per week from around 100 Web sites. These attacks are initiated in a number of ways. In addition to the conventional e-mail routine, which invites e-mail users to click on a link to a Trojan-infected site, scammers are now using instant messaging to issue invites."
posted by Jim Horning at 4:01 PM
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