Phishing on the rise

One in three malicious emails a phish, says MessageLabs.

A report on the current state of digital security has revealed that phishing scams constitute a growing danger to computer users’ privacy, and to their finances. According to


MessageLabs’

August report

, one in 321 emails sent in August was a phish, up from one in 461 in July, making up a third of all ‘malicious’ mails. Almost 65% of all email was classed as spam, also up on previous figures but far below the peak of two years ago.

Numerous banks, insurance houses,

charities

,

online stores

and

stock traders

have all warned of known attacks in recent weeks, while perrenial targets such as

eBay

and

PayPal

have seen

increasing sophistication

in phishing attempts aimed at their customers.

Fighting the problem are, among others, the makers of

web browsers

, and search giants

Google

and


Yahoo


.

Find out more about the phishing problem at the

Virus Bulletin conference

(11-13 October, Montréal), where Jamz Yaneza (

Trend Micro

), Michael Morgan (

IBM

) and Dmitri Alperovitch (

CipherTrust

) will each present papers on pertinent aspects of the phishing problem. See the full programme

here

or click

here to register now

.

Posted on 5 September 2006 by

Virus Bulletin