Report say Phishing is reaching new heights

This news will not please many people. It is turning out to be the next big nightmare for corporates and technical support people. The number of Phishing attacks is continuing its growth as a group that monitors these attempts reported that February saw another increase in numbers of Phishing attempts. Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) reported around 13,141 unique Phishing e-mail messages. This number itself is 2% higher than the attempts reported in the month of January.

The number of websites, which supported to these attacks, also increased marginally with the group reporting a growth of 1.8% to reach a figure of 2625. APWG gets their data from various sources, which includes reports from ISPs, companies, networking specialists and even individuals.

The growth trends might not look very threatening in this outlook. However, compared to the numbers recorded in July 2004 these attempts have seen a growth of 26%. A representative of the group APWG said in a statement: “What’s scary is that we are seeing the numbers of servers being co-opted by scammers for criminal activities really jumping. It’s as if they are taking over more of the Internet infrastructure”. USA continues to remain the biggest source of servers serving the websites used for Phishing attempts.

If this indeed is true, it might become a big problem for the network administrators all around the globe to keep themselves protected for such threats. With Phishing basically targeting banks and credit card companies, huge risks are involved for web users who are not aware of these threats and can lead to misuse of private information.