Phishing 'outwits' viruses and trojans

Statistics from security firm MessageLabs show that for the first time, the number of phishing emails has surpassed the number of emails containing malware such as viruses or trojans.

The rate of email phishing in total email traffic sent in January has reached 1.07% - corresponding to the rate of 1 in 93.3 messages sent is phishing email. Meanwhile, the email infection rate of malware is only 0.83% - equivalent to a ratio of 1 in 119.9 emails containing malicious code.

According to MessageLabs, the reason for the difference is because virus attacks have now become more clear and no longer widespread.

" In the past month, the rate of malicious emails only suddenly increased with the arrival of the Storm Worm and soon returned to normal levels ," said Mark Sunner - Chief Technology Officer of MessageLabs - said.

Phishing attacks are becoming more and more complex and dangerous. Before banks and entrepreneurs applied the two-step authentication mechanism, online scammers introduced "man in the middle" phishing tools that allowed them to bypass those tools. The number of attacks of this type has now increased dramatically.

Meanwhile, phishing emails are becoming more and more personalized, making it increasingly difficult for users to become aware of and become victims. " We have recorded an increase in the number of phishing emails that have very clear goals ," Sunner said.

Phishing sites have also begun to turn to the trend of using Flash instead of traditional HTML to bypass the existing anti-phishing content filtering tools on web browser types.

Switch to attack with the web

Security firm Sophos also confirmed that the number of phishing emails in January has surpassed the number of malware. "Currently there are more phishing emails than the number of email attachments with malware," said Graham Cluley, Sophos' senior technology consultant.

However, Mr. Cluley warned that could be a sign that hackers are diverting from spreading malicious code by email to another form such as spread through the web, for example, it is not necessarily a change of trend Malware to phishing.

"I'm sure hackers are turning to attack via the web. This explains why the number of emails containing malicious code decreases. They have been replaced by emails containing links to a malicious website or road. Download link malicious code ".

Over the past month, Sophos has detected a total of about 5,000 new malicious web links.

Hoang Dung