The Internet Has Never Been More Dangerous - latest research from the APWG

Today, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) released their Phishing Trends Report for the 1st Half of 2009. Consumers and small business should be aware of the newest web-based threats that are out there and growing.

According to the APWG, Rogue anti-malware is growing at an unprecedented rate. In the first quarter of 2009, more new strains of rogue anti-malware were created than in all of 2008. Between January and the end of June 2009, the number of such programs grew 585%.

The number of unique phishing websites detected by APWG during the first half of 2009 fluctuated by nearly 30,000 between February and June. June’s high for the half of 49,084 was still 12% lower than the all-time high for this data set of 55,643 in April, 2007.

Payment Services jumped into the top position of targeted industry sectors in Q1 2009, rising over Financial Services for the first time since APWG began tracking the proportions of phishing attacks directed at each industry sector. The proportion of phishing campaigns directed against the Payment Services sector continued increasing through Q2, up some 16% from quarter to quarter, while the Financial Services sector’s proportion dropped more than 10% during the same period.

Additional Highlights from the 1st Half ‘09 Phishing Activity Trends Report include:

• Unique phishing reports submitted to APWG recorded a high of 37,165 in May, just under 7% higher than last year’s high of 34,758 in October.
• Brand-domain pairs increased to a record 21,085 in June, up 92% from the beginning of 2009.
• The number of hijacked brands ascended to a high of 310 at the end of Q1.
• Banking trojan/password-stealing crimeware infections detected increased during more than 186% between Q4, 2008 and Q2, 2009.
• The total number of infected computers rose more than 66% between Q4 2008 and the end of the half, 2009 to 11,937,944, representing more than 54% of the total sample of scanned computers.
• Sweden moved ahead of the United States as the nation hosting the most phish websites at the half’s end.
• China’s IP space hosted the most websites harboring malevolent code from March through June.

As hackers and cybercriminals find new ways to attack, security software and education can be your best defense. Web security and web filtering solutions, like Livia Web Protection, protect against phishing websites by automatically blocking access to those sites if a link would be clicked. Also, make sure that your Anti-virus and Anti-malware definitions are up-to-date and working properly.

To view the full APWG report, please visit http://www.apwg.com/reports/apwg_report_h1_2009.pdf