Phishing Sites Proliferate, But Experts Say Help Is on the Way

The population of Web sites dedicated to the crime of phishing jumped markedly in October after dipping late in the summer, according to the latest data from the Anti-Phishing Working Group. The good news, though, is that experts appear to be working out a new way to shut down these sites in a way that will keep fraudsters off the Internet. The group's October report, released last week, shows the number of unique phishing sites grew 22% from September, to 34,266. That's the highest number detected by the APWG since May, though it falls far short of the record 55,643 found last April. This number may soon start to plunge, however. Noting that domain registrars can remove sites found to be engaged in fraud, the APWG says it is hammering out a method that would not only shut down phishing sites but also keep operators from setting up shop with a different Internet service provider (ISP). “The best way to take down a domain used only for phishing is to have it removed at the registrar or registry level. This prevents the bad guy from moving the domain to a new ISP,” says Laura Mather, senior scientist at San Francisco security firm and domain registrar MarkMonitor Inc. and managing director of operational policy for the APWG, in the report. “The APWG is very excited about a proposal we are developing that will define a process for registries and registrars to remove domains used only for phishing from the Internet.” A consortium of software firms, payment companies, and law-enforcement agencies, the APWG also reported the number of unique phishing campaigns fell in October to 31,650 from 38,514 the month before. That's still a high number, as no other month in 2007 recorded more than 30,000 attacks before September. The number of legitimate Internet brands victimized by phishers jumped to 120 after plummeting to 92 in September. Even so, this is still well below the 176 brands targeted in phishing scams in October 2006. Financial-services firms account for most of these brands. Meanwhile, the number of unique keylogging applications?malware that sniffs out confidential data on infected machines?also climbed, to 359 from 210. That's the highest number of such Trojans detected in the previous year.