Phishing attacks daily target over 1L people: Kaspersky

PUNE: During a recent survey, Kaspersky Lab specialists compared data on phishing attacks over 50 million Kaspersky security network users between May 1, 2012 and April 30, 2013 with figures for the equivalent period of 2011-2012. They found that in 2012-2013, phishers launched attacks affecting an average of 1.02 lakh people worldwide each day - twice as many as in 2011-2012.

"Phishing attacks most often target users in Russia, the US, India, Vietnam and the UK. Vietnam, the US, India and Germany have the greatest number of attacked users - the total number of attacks in these regions has doubled since last year. The majority of the servers hosting phishing pages were registered in the US, the UK, Germany, Russia and India," said a statement issued on the findings.

The survey also found out that the number of unique attack sources - such as fraudulent websites and servers - has more than tripled 2012-2013. Over half (56%) ofidentified unique attack sources were found in just 10 countries, which means the attackers have a small set of preferred "home bases" to launch their attacks.

"The services of Yahoo, Google, Facebook and Amazon were most often attacked by phishers - 30% ofregistered incidents involved fake versions of their sites. Over 20% ofphishing attacks mimicked banks and other financial organizations. American Express, PayPal, Xbox live, Twitter and etc. are in top 30 most targeted sites," the statement said.

"The volume and variety of phishing attacks detected during the survey indicates that phishing is not merely one tool among many for the illegal enrichment of fraudsters, but represents a significant and visible threat. These attacks are relatively simple to organize and are demonstrably effective, attracting an increasing number of cybercriminals to this type of illegal activity. The volume of phishing attacks, which according to Kaspersky security network nearly doubled in a single year, confirms this trend", said Nikita Shvetsov, deputy CTO (research) at Kaspersky Lab.