At least that’s the word from this banking industry report. The explosion of bogus antivirus “rogue” scams is largely responsible for the increase.

Targeted phishing attacks (spear phishing) have also risen sharply. Corporate bank accounts are still the juiciest targets, but medium and even small businesses are also being attacked because they often have lower levels of security awareness.

The past week has seen some major compromises of email passwords

Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail, AOL, and others were attacked and the passwords were made public. The email providers have asserted that this was a massive phishing attack, but another researcher has suggested that it was the result of botnets or keyloggers. In either case, email account security is a BIG problem. The best defense – use strong passwords to defeat guessing attacks and use some COMMON SENSE – educate clients about the types of phishing scams that they are likely to encounter at EVERY opportunity!!

Not surprisingly, this has spawned a flurry of spam phishing attacks – some offering low prices on goods. Warn users and clients that an email that comes from a friend or colleague is not necessarily trustworthy – that person’s email account could been been hijacked.

Dennis H in West Virginia, US

October 7, 2009