11 August, 2005 - 4:41pm

A new report published by the Anti-Phishing Working Group on August 3, 2005, found that phishing attacks has risen by 42% over the same period last year. The study noted that small banks and credit unions are increasingly being targeted as many large financial institutions have retrofitted their networks to spot phishers.

The APWG also discovered a jump in phishing-based Trojans through keylogging and redirectors, which more than doubled in the last quarter. A phishing-based Trojan is crimeware code designed with the intent of collecting information on the end-user in order to steal those users' credentials through keylogging. Another type, is malicious code designed with the intent of redirecting end-users network traffic to a location where it was not intended to go. This redirection is for the purpose of gathering compromising information, which could lead to identify theft.

Earlier this year we wrote about how the Sxip Network can help combat the ID theft problem. See: Gone Phishing.