Cyber Security Institute

Thursday, November 09, 2006

Phishing is becoming a higher value illegal activity for hackers

The size of their average catch increased almost five-fold, from $257 per victim last year to $1,244 in 2006

According to Gartner analyst Avivah Litan, this is happening because scammers are identifying higher-income targets, moving their phishing sites more frequently and switching up the types of business they try to impersonate.

Victims click on links they receive in the body of e-mails—and, increasingly, in instant messages—from sites purporting to be legitimate businesses like financial institutions, e-commerce and auction sites.

Approximately 109 million U.S. adults have received phishing e-mail attacks, up from 57 million in 2004, according to Gartner.  Total loses from phishing attacks have risen to $2.8 billion in 2006, twice the amount lost in 2004.

According to the survey, conducted by Gartner analysts in August of this year, adults earning more than $100,000 per year are attacked more often than those making less.

According to Litan, cyber criminals have done a better job of identifying high-income individuals.  They sell each other credit card numbers in online chat rooms, and can identify credit cards with higher spending limits by the first six digits on the card.

http://www.internetnews.com/stats/article.php/3642971