IT World • Created April 7, 2014 04:00

One third of phishing attacks in 2013 aimed at stealing money -Study

Cybercriminals tried to obtain confidential user information in order to steal money from bank accounts last year, Kaspersky Lab’s study Financial cyber threats in 2013, said.It said cybercriminals are trying harder than ever to acquire confidential user information and steal money from bank accounts by creating fake sites mimicking financial organisations. Phishing is a fraudulent […]

One third of phishing attacks in 2013 aimed at stealing money -Study
One third of phishing attacks in 2013 aimed at stealing money -Study

Cybercriminals tried to obtain confidential user information in order to steal money from bank accounts last year, Kaspersky Lab’s study Financial cyber threats in 2013, said.
It said cybercriminals are trying harder than ever to acquire confidential user information and steal money from bank accounts by creating fake sites mimicking financial organisations.
Phishing is a fraudulent scheme used by cybercriminals to obtain confidential user data with the help of fake web pages imitating Internet resources. Unlike malicious software created for particular operating systems, phishing attacks threaten all devices which can access web pages. That is why they are so popular with scammers.
“Phishing sites aimed at harvesting users’ financial details mainly use the brand names of popular online stores, e-payment systems and online banking systems. In 2013, the most attractive targets were banks, which were used in 70.6% of all financial phishing. That’s a sharp increase from 2012 when bank phishing represented just 52%. Overall, fake bank websites were involved in twice as many (22.2%) phishing attacks in 2013”, it said.
 Sergey Lozhkin, Senior Security Researcher at Kaspersky Lab said: “Phishing attacks are so popular because they are simple to deploy and extremely effective. It is often not easy for even advanced Internet users to distinguish a well-designed fraudulent site from a legitimate page, which makes it even more important to install a specialised protection solution. In addition, phishing causes reputational and financial damage to organisations that see their brands exploited in phishing attacks.

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