28% of the Rising Volume of Phishing Attacks Target the Financial Sector

It’s a laurel, of sorts, that financial firms would like to rebuff. They sustained the largest share of phishing attacks in the fourth quarter, accounting for 27.7% of all attacks, followed by the broad “other” category at 18.2%, and webmail, software-as-a-service at 17.7%. That’s according to the Phishing Activity Trends Report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The financial sector’s share of attacks is up significantly from 23.2% in the third quarter of 2022, the Cambridge, Mass.-based APWG says.

Attacks against payments firms accounted for a 6% share in the fourth quarter, while those targeting e-commerce and retail entities were at 5.6%. Phishing agents targeted cryptocurrency providers in 2.3% of attacks, a decrease from the third quarter.

As defined by the APWG, phishing is a crime employing both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers’ personal identity data and financial-account credentials.

“Phishing against cryptocurrency targets–such as cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers—fell from 4.5 percent in Q2 to 2.0 percent in Q3 and 2.3 percent in Q4, as the crypto market continued to be roiled by falling values,” the report says.

In the broader scope, business email compromise, in which a scammer impersonates a company officer or other trusted party to trick an employee into sending money, continued to make an impact. The average amount requested in wire transfer business email compromise attacks was $132,559, up 41% from the third quarter average of $93,881, according to data from Fortra, an APWG member.

“The volume of wire transfer BEC attacks in Q4 decreased by 64 percent compared to the prior quarter. This suggests the bad actors behind BEC wire transfer incidents focused their attention on fewer but more impactful attacks,” the report says.

Scammers, like legitimate consumers, have preferred payment methods, too, with 60% requesting Amazon gift cards as payment. Apple Inc. gift cards were second, with 9% wanting iTunes and another 9% wanting Apple Store cards.  

For all of 2022, the APWG counted more than 4.7 million phishing attacks. Since the beginning of 2019, the number of phishing attacks has grown by more than 150% per year.