Phishing Attempts against Three Individuals Net More than INR 2,000,000 in Bangalore

A number of phishing attacks that targeted three individuals in Bangalore, including a professor employed at a renowned science institute within the city, one teacher working with certain well-known private school as well as a business entrepreneur, led to at least INR 20 lakhs in losses during August 2014, published thehindu.com in news on September 12, 2014.

A phishing e-mail that landed with the professor, an applicant for visa to make a foreign trip to deliver an honorary lecture during this month (September 2014), was actually from a cyber crook asserting he was the Central Bureau of Investigation's Director telling that the professor must acquire one "anti-terrorism certificate" through a payment of INR 7 lakhs to the bureau and that he should carry that certificate while doing the journey for eschewing legal complications. But the professor, after some days, realizing the con designed for duping him, informed about it to the cops dealing in cyber-crime.

Police Superintendent D.C. Rajappa for Cyber-Crime Cell said that his office received no less than 3 phishing complaints in Bangalore on a weekly basis. Thehindu.com reported this.

Similarly, another phishing scammer duped the school teacher as the former asserted he represented a university abroad and that he would help the teacher obtain a Ph.D. Here also, the victim was scammed off INR 3 Lakhs. Likewise, a businessman operating from the city and trying for getting his son employed abroad lost INR 13 lakhs to fraudsters.

Disturbingly, the aforementioned kind of successful phishing assaults resulted in RSA the security company rank India the No.4 nation to be most hit with phishing assaults accounting for 3% of the entire incidences. More nations being hit with phishing assaults are USA, Germany, UK and South Africa with 53%, 17%, 8% and 3% of the total incidences respectively, states the company.

In the same way as RSA, McAfee another security vendor too in its latest "McAfee Labs Threats Report: August 2014" categorizes India as No.4 on the list of most targeted nations from phishers within Asia, hosting 786 phishing URLs, whilst USA is No.1 among the countries with maximum phishing URLs.

» SPAMfighter News - 9/23/2014