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The sudden proliferation of Web sites hosting phishing attacks that began in October cooled only slightly in November, as online fraudsters continue to create multiple sub-domains to foil anti-phishing filters. The number of unique phishing sites came to 37,439, essentially flat with the 37,444 reported for October, according to the Anti-Phishing Working Group's latest report. These numbers, however, are up substantially from those seen in prior months, owing primarily to the fraudsters' efforts to thwart filters that keep track of known phishing sites and flash warnings to users when they visit those sites. The APWG report appears days after an announcement by RSA Security Inc. that its researchers had discovered an especially insidious new tool being offered for sale on Internet forums catering to fraudsters. The tool allows phishers to set up Web sites that import in real time the content and other features of targeted-brand sites, so the user has the feeling he is interacting with a legitimate bank or merchant site. But this so-called universal man-in-the-middle phishing kit intercepts all data the user enters (Digital Transactions News, Jan. 10). The number of reports of unique phishing attacks, each of which could have included a blizzard of e-mail messages trying to trick unwary consumers to visit spoofed sites, also moderated in November, dropping to 25,816 from October's count of 26,877, according to the APWG, a consortium of software vendors, electronic payment processors, and law-enforcement agencies that has been tracking phishing trends since 2003. Though down somewhat, these figures remain close to the all-time high of 28,571 recorded in June. Phishing e-mails typically try to induce recipients to visit what appear to be legitimate banking or retailer sites, where they are asked to enter confidential data such as passwords, PINs, or card account numbers. The number of brands exploited in this way by fraudsters fell sharply in November, to 120 from the record 176 seen in October. Financial institutions remain phishers' favorite target brands, but the report says “several major online retailers had their brands spoofed in phishing attacks in November.” The use of malware, or malicious code that fraudsters plant on users' computers to pick up data as they enter them, remained little changed in November but in one respect remains at historic highs. Malware that sniffs out and passes on passwords and other such information, known as keyloggers, fell to 230 reported unique applications from a record 237 in November. But the population of Web sites hosting such malware rose only slightly, to 1,899 from 1,800, and remains well below the record high of 2,945 recorded by the APWG in June.
