BitDefender Analysis: Phishing Attacks Up 20%

Romanian-based software security solutions developer BitDefender has released an analysis of the phishing attacks conducted in Romania in the first half of the year. The analysis describes phishing as an illegal attempt to acquire personal and financial information in view of obtaining unlawful benefits.

According to BitDefender, statistical data regarding phishing attacks conducted in the first six months of 2009 indicate an upward trend and a nominal increase of 20% compared to the corresponding period of 2008. Given such increase, Romania is unfortunately narrowing the gap separating it from Western countries in this field. "In the current economic context, spam and phishing attacks have gained proportion," said Vlad Valceanu, Head of the BitDefender Anti-Spam Laboratory.

"For cyber criminals, the economic context and the panic and stress caused among the general population by the current conditions present ideal opportunities for obtaining access to confidential information. It is now more than ever before that users need to be extremely careful about how they manage financial and personal information on the Internet," he added.

According to the analysis released by BitDefender, the most targeted commercial identities in Romania are part of the financial system, especially banks and bank transfer platforms.

• Phishing attacks by simple patterns

Specialists say that phishing attacks are based on simple patterns using social engineering tools. The author of a phishing attack will typically send out a very large volume of spam trying to deceive some of the recipients into disclosing their specific electronic banking access information or login information for various online services. The spam message is purposely designed to appear as sent by the respective financial institution and asks the targeted victim to follow a hyperlink to open the webpage of an e-banking service, for instance.

Most of the arguments stated in the spam associated to a phishing attack are negative. The list includes the imminent freeze of a bank account or the expiration of a bank account or credit card (40%), fictitious updates to the bank"s security system (30%) and an increase in the bank"s withdrawal fee or management fee (10%). A smaller number of attacks are based on positive arguments, such as the promise of a substantial amount of money in exchange for filling in a form (15%). Whichever the argument may be, the only real motivation of the phishing attack is to empty the accounts of the targeted victims.