China Becomes Major Base For Phishing

China is the newfound super power for cyber crime, as per security companies. Marshal's 'Threat Research and Content Engineering' (TRACE) team report that South Korea and China are the main culprits of massive hike in phishing. The firm reported that the level of phishing e-mails has been highest since July this year. It spiked from 0.4% of the entire spam as on November 24, 2006 to the current rate of 2.2% of overall spam reported.
Phishing e-mails in China target mostly financial institutions such as 'Fifth Third Bank', 'National Australia Bank', and 'Bendigo Bank'.

China is also becoming the base for 'DDoS attacks' and it is spreading rapidly. Keith Laslop, president of 'DDoS mitigation' company Prolexic, called it as "like the Wild West".

Laslop said that a greater activity had been reported in last few weeks and these attacks were increasingly small but focused. He also compared these attacks with a gambling industry in which he described a small online shop trading 'Italian charm bracelets' that came under a series of DDoS attacks in those days when a rival in China emerged.

It can be clearly stated that now China is the leading phishing e-mails generator in the world. With a spike in phishing mails, the TRACE group said that November has witnessed an explosion in volume of Christmas spam. In October end, there was virtually no distribution of Christmas spam. But this month, it accounts for 10.9% of overall spam. In this relation, 'Director of Product Management' for Marshal, Bradley Anstis said that just as spam levels increased almost twofold in November, the current hike in phishing e-mails is also due to the onset of the holiday season.

He added that spammers know that an increasing number of consumers are shopping online, seeking ideas for gifts and welcoming e-cards. Therefore, more people are likely to open the e-mails, some of which possibly have infected attachments. Further, spammers change the spam variation when it no longer gets through. They are constantly stepping onto new spam techniques such as with "Ransom Note Spam" using animated GIFs and other image randomization.

Related article: China’s Best Initiatives To Deal With Spam

» SPAMfighter News - 12/6/2006