Phishing Increasing in Number and Sophistication: IID

IID (Internet Identity) a security company, on July 26, 2011, issued its Q2-2011 research paper according to which, phishing during the period increased 11% compared to that of Q1-2011. MarketWire published this on July 26, 2011.

Moreover, IID highlights that it saw the major part of the above growth during Q2-2011 within the e-commerce industry wherein Taobao.com the Internet auction as well as retail website of China has taken onto No.2 position on the list of targets for phishing attacks covering all industries.

Essentially, IID polled enterprises that lead the threats list of spear phishing, a phishing operation that's extremely personalized. Over 85% of respondents admitted they were worried of spear phishing among which 33% reported as being "extremely concerned." Moreover, a whole 50% of polled participants said they'd fallen prey to spear phishing during 2010.

Actually, as per the report, spear phishing scams frequently attack Internet-users whose e-mail ids get revealed though the latest security hacks. And as they gather users' names, e-mail ids as also details regarding the services and goods they consume, cyber-crooks easily manage in persuading victims towards hitting on malevolent web-links, with most of the hits occurring through organizations' PCs that could well be contaminated with Trojan Zeus.

President and Chief Technology Officer Rod Rasmussen of IID said that overall, there was an increasing perception that cyber-criminals were getting more-and-more advanced within their targeting strategies, with the organizations' networks eventually getting compromised. He added that his company's survey discovered the majority of polling respondents as already being worried, while IID felt that incase they weren't, it was time they did. MarketWire published this.

Moreover, some more discoveries in the report include phishers who exploited latest events such as Osama bin Laden's assassination as well as the Japan tsunami and earthquake for enticing phishing victims. Additionally, criminals are attacking major service providers of e-mail such as Epsilon, seeking to acquire personalized account data as also gain control over the infrastructure resources of their e-mail.

Nevertheless, IID is urging Internet-users for treating e-mails with suspicion as also avoiding clicking web-links sent within these messages unless verified, even if they appear legitimate.

Related article: Phishing With A Redirector Code

» SPAMfighter News - 8/6/2011