China goes phishing

ACCORDING TO NEW RESEARCH from Marshal's Threat Research and Content Engineering, otherwise known as TRACE team, there's been a threefold increase in phishing scams over the last week, South Korea and China being the main culprits.

It's been a big jump over the last week - at the 24th of November phishing emails made up 0.4 percent of all spam, whereas now phishing makes up 2.2 percent. From last week, China was 10th highest on the phishing smam list, however, now the country is sitting at the top of the charts.

The team also found a huge increase in Christmas spam, unsurprisingly. There was almost no Christmas spam around at all at the end of October, but it now represents 10.9% of all spam, says TRACE.

Bradley Anstis of Marshal reckons that the huge amount of scam spam is linked in with the increasing trend of buying online, particularly at this retail-mad time of the year. "Spammers are aware that there are more consumers shopping online, looking for gift ideas and receiving e-cards," he said. "There are more people who are likely open to the messages."

The big targets at the moment include Fifth Third Bank, National Australia Bank and Bendigo Bank, the team said. µ