http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/10/spear-phishing/ By Kim Zetter Threat Level Wired.com October 26, 2010 The number of targeted phishing attacks against individuals has risen dramatically in the last five years from one or two a week in 2005 to more than 70 a day this month, according to a new report from computer security firm Symantec. The industry most recently hardest hit by so-called spear-phishing attacks is the retail industry, according to Symantec’s MessageLabs Intelligence report. The number of attacks against retail exploded in September in particular, jumping to 516 attacks from just seven attacks a month for the rest of 2010. The statistics are somewhat skewed, though, since most of the September attacks against retail were directed at a single company. Symantec counts each copy of a malicious e-mail received by an organization as a unique attack, even if it’s the same e-mail sent to multiple people at the same time. But the report illustrates that, five years after its invention, spear-phishing remains a trusted tool in the modern cyber criminal’s arsenal. Unlike regular phishing attacks, which involve spamming a message to random users, spear-phishing targets specific individuals or small groups of employees at specific companies. The former are generally designed to steal banking credentials and e-mail passwords from users, while the latter generally focus on gaining access to a system to steal intellectual property and other sensitive data. [...] ___________________________________________________________ Tegatai Managed Colocation: Four Provider Blended Tier-1 Bandwidth, Fortinet Universal Threat Management, Natural Disaster Avoidance, Always-On Power Delivery Network, Cisco Switches, SAS 70 Type II Datacenter. Find peace of mind, Defend your Critical Infrastructure. http://www.tegataiphoenix.com/Received on Wed Oct 27 2010 - 01:08:40 PDT
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