Top 5 phishing bait
"Phishing alert for around one in six users in Switzerland," writes Kaspersky Lab, which has investigated the top lures - and provides security tips to go with them.
The world map from Kaspersky Lab illustrates the respective national phishing attack rates in the past year. Switzerland is in the front midfield and is assigned by the Kaspersky experts to the color orange, the second most vulnerable category. The top nations highlighted in red include Ecuador, Brazil and Japan.
The risk of falling victim to phishing is also comparatively high because the quality of the attacks is improving all the time, as the security provider emphasizes.
What are the baits?
Categorizing the organizations most frequently used by cybercriminals for phishing attacks worldwide for 2015 results in the following top 5:
- Worldwide Internet portals (30.73% of phishing attacks)
- Social networks (15.84% of phishing attacks)
- Online stores (14.33% of phishing attacks)
- Banks (10.21% of phishing attacks)
- Telecommunications providers (9.17% of phishing attacks)
On the one hand, links to phishing pages are scattered via e-mail. The e-mail addresses needed for this are sold in large quantities in the cyber underground, among other places, often after they fall into the hands of cybercriminals during a hacking attack on a provider. Users are often faced with the problem that they have to provide an e-mail address every time they register on the web, but at the same time it is difficult for them to judge how secure the portal's security measures actually are.
Phishing links, on the other hand, are also distributed via freely accessible websites such as blogs, forums, social networks or other portals.
How to protect yourself?
In general, users should use effective spam and phishing protection, for example within an antivirus solution, and never click directly on links offered in e-mails, as the IT security provider writes and emphasizes: "Instead, it is better to enter the URL address manually or use a bookmark created for the page. In addition: always exercise common sense, i.e., a strong cyber instinct."
The 1/16 issue of SicherheitsForum, which also contains IT security topics, takes up the aspect of "phishing". A trial subscription can be here be requested.
