Phishing drops
HACKERS APPEAR to be rethinking the old favourite Internet scam of phishing.
A report released by IBM shows a big drop in the volume of 'phishing' e-mails, where the scammers send an email that looks like a legitimate message from a bank or some other company.
If the recipients click on a link in a phishing e-mail, they land on a rogue website that captures their passwords, account numbers, and other important data.
Big Blue keeps an eye on the scam and issues a mid-year security report. This year it found that phishing accounted for just 0.1 per cent of all spam in the first six months of this year. In the same period in 2008, phishing made up 0.2 per cent to 0.8 percent of all spam.
IBM said overall spam volume hasn't expanded like it did in years past and it is difficult to see why phishing is declining.
Kris Lamb, director of the X-Force research team in IBM's Internet Security Systems division, said that he would not say that phishing has died as a threat but this is a big decline.
He thinks that computer users are getting cleverer about spotting fake websites and security software in browsers is getting better at filtering out phishing sites.
IBM is also seeing an increase in "Trojan horse" programs so it might be that these are replacing the old phishing tricks. µ
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Phishing artists are probably switching over to creating rogue antivirus software instead. It's much easier, and less illegal to get someone to send you money by putting an "antivirus" program on their computer which does nothing besides annoy the end user and ask them to pay for it.
With the subsequent push back on ISP's allowing phishing and other illicit activities, it appears that this kind of activity has reduced.
Now, If we can filter out more mass mis-directed email I would be even more happy.
I really hope all those virus makers and phishers and people doing all sorts of stupidity burn in hell though.
I am getting more than ever bank phishing attempts on my .com.au this year than ever before. Last week also an attempt to get my ATO details.
It must be a regional variation, or maybe the hackers are diverting their attacks more to non-USA now?
Just like market evolution, when a market or potential area being target get saturate, it migrate to another for potential growth.
If north American and European internet user becomes aware of Phishing, emerging countries becomes the next target.
Scam artist don't die, they just evolve and migrate.