Phishing is getting smarter and wider

“The number of brands exploited by online con artists grew to a record 154 in July, according to a report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group.” From article on news.zdnet.com

“Even as phishers widen their nets, they are getting ever more focused on targeting financial services, which grew to 93.5 percent of all targets in July, according to the APWG report.

The report showed a drop in the number of unique reported phishing campaigns from 28,571 to 23,670, but the number of reported phishing sites rose steeply to 14,191, 18 percent higher than the previous peak.

The U.S. topped the list of countries hosting phishing sites, with 29.9 percent, followed by the Republic of Korea with 13.3 percent, China with 12 percent, France with 5.9 percent and Australia with 4.6 percent.

Attacks are getting more sophisticated, the group found, noting that a malicious site is now capable of placing a Trojan horse onto a system without user interaction. The Trojan involved, Web Attacker, is a Russian do-it-yourself toolkit sold for anywhere from $20 to $300. ”

In most cases user can handle phishing by himself, just check real domain against stated one and don’t follow stupid emails, but there are more sofisticated attacks:

1. DNS cracking and modification of system’s DNS settings to direct some or all DNS lookups to a fraudulent DNS server capable of directing users to fraudulent sites when particular addresses are entered.

2. Trojan horses. For example in some cases (IE someone told?) a malicious site is now capable of placing a Trojan horse onto a system without user interaction. The Trojan involved, Web Attacker, is a Russian do-it-yourself toolkit sold for anywhere from $20 to $300. “

3. Putting phishing pages on real brand domains, like Google phishing hole or PayPal flaw.