Phishing attacks drop: Are computer users smarter?
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
The number of spam emails consisting of phishing spam - which is designed to trick recipients into divulging their personal information - has dropped by at least half this year, in a sign that computer users are getting wise to the attacks.
According to the mid-year online threat report from IBM, phishing made up just 0.1 percent of all spam in the first six months of this year, down from 0.2 percent to 0.8 percent of spam during the first half of 2008.
Although phishing still results in identity theft and fraud on a discomforting scale - as many as 55,000 new victims each month, according to one report - Kris Lamb, director of the X-Force research team at IBM, said computer users are getting better at identifying fraudulent emails and websites, according to the Associated Press.
Anti-virus protection software and better web browsers, which use reputation-based software to block websites that may host malware or phishing pages - could also have led to the drop-off.
However, cybercriminals may just be moving on to other tactics, such as targeting users of web 2.0 sites like Facebook and Twitter.
A number of rogue applications were spotted last week on Facebook that send messages with links to a phishing website for stealing login credentials. The apps attempt to harvest users' Facebook login names and passwords in order to send out more phishing spam from their accounts.
Related News:
FBI: Law firms and PR agencies high on hacker target lists - 11.18.2009
Using complex email scams, cyber criminals are increasingly targeting sensitive information held by law firms and public relations companies, according to an FBI advisory released earlier this month.
Phishing email takes numerous forms - 11.17.2009
The practice of impersonating authoritative websites and sources in order to convince victims to divulge personal information - known as phishing - has come a long way from the Nigerian "419" scams that popularized the technique in the public mind. Modern phishing is becoming increasingly dangerous in part because attacks can come from a variety of sources.
Email filtering technology working overtime, but spam won't go quietly - 11.16.2009
While modern email filtering systems can block 95 to 99 percent of spam messages, according to Tech Target, mountains of unsolicited email are still delivered every day, accounting for the vast majority of all emails sent.
Phishing scam targets investors, spoofs finance agency - 10.9.2009
The Financial Industry Regulatory Agency (FINRA), an independent regulator of brokerages, is warning investors that they may be targeted by a phishing scam through emails claiming to come from the agency.
Phishing scammers leak Windows Live Hotmail passwords to web - 10.6.2009
Hackers posted thousands of passwords from Windows Live Hotmail email accounts to a website over the weekend, in what Microsoft said was the result of a phishing campaign targeting the free webmail service.
|
