Kaspersky Lab global cybersecurity company said its anti-phishing system prevented more than 482 million attempts to visit fraudulent websites in 2018, a double increase from 2017, when 236 million such attempts were blocked.
The rapid increase in phishing attacks in 2018 is part of a long-standing trend, with 2017 and 2016 seeing a 15% increase over the previous years. However, 2018 marks a new peak.
Phishing is one of the most versatile types of social engineering attack, as it can be disguised in many ways and used for different purposes.
To create a phishing page, all you need to do is create a copy of a popular or trusted website, lure unwary users to the website, and trick them into entering personal information.
Such information often includes financial credentials such as bank account passwords or payment card details, or social media. It could also be a case of someone opening an attachment or clicking on a link that then “downloads” malware onto their computer.
The consequences of these attacks can range from losing money to compromising an entire corporate network, Kaspersky said. Phishing attacks, especially malicious links, are a very popular way to target organizations.
The financial sector was hit particularly hard. Over 44% of all phishing attacks detected by Kaspersky Lab technologies were directed at banks, payment systems and online stores. This means that in 2018 there were almost as many financial phishing attacks as there were phishing attacks in 2017.
The country with the highest percentage of users attacked by phishing remained Brazil with the percentage of affected users reaching 28%. Portugal, which was in 7th place a year ago, ranks second with 23% of users, while Australia moved from second to third place, with 21% of people affected.
“The increase in the number of phishing attacks could be influenced by the increased effectiveness of social engineering methods used to lure users to visit fraudulent pages,” said Tatyana Scherbakova, security researcher at Kaspersky Lab.
“2018 was marked by the active exploitation of new schemes and methods, such as fake alerts, along with the perfection of old ones, for example, traditional scams around Black Friday or national holidays. Fraudsters are getting better at exploiting important opportunities, such as the FIFA World Cup,” he said.
In other Spam and Phishing Report reports, Tatyana stated that the spam rate on the internet was 52.48% which is 4.15% less than in 2017. The largest source of spam this year was China with a share of 11.69%.
Kaspersky Lab experts advise users to always check email addresses in unexpected or unexpected messages, the web address of the website they are directed to, the address of the link in a message, and even the sender's email address, to make sure they are genuine and that the link in the message does not redirect to another hyperlink.
They also added that if people are unsure whether a website is genuine and secure, they should never enter their credentials. “If you think you have entered your login and password information on a fake page, change your password immediately and call your bank if you think your card information has been compromised,” the experts said.
“Always use a secure connection, especially when visiting sensitive websites. Do not use unknown or public Wi-Fi without password protection. If you use an unsecured connection, cybercriminals can redirect you to phishing pages without you knowing. For maximum protection, use VPN solutions that encrypt your traffic,” the experts added.
