APWG Report: Brands Targeted by Cybercrime Gangs Reach All-Time High in April

APWG Convenes Unprecedented Summit in Puerto Rico to Plot Global Response to Borderless Cybercrime Plexus

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The APWG reports in its Q2 2012 Phishing Activity Trends Report released this week that the number of brands targeting by phishing attacks sustained an all-time high of 428 in April of this year, the second record-breaking quarter for cybercrime brand abuse reported by the APWG this year.

“In every dimension of this global confrontation, this Fall’s summit is an unprecedented alignment of global institutions in the fight against cybercrime.”

Reports received by the APWG during Q2 2012 indicate new record highs in the numbers of attacks on identifiable brands and in the numbers of phishing websites to lure Web users. The APWG reports that in April 2012 an all-time record 428 brands targeted by phishers. This was a 9 percent increase from the previous all-time high of 392, recorded in February and March of this year.

“Targeted attacks remain the favorite attack vector used to launch phishing attacks, as the number of unique brands [during the entire quarter] being targeted rose to 601 in Q2 2012 from 587 in Q1 2012,” said Ihab Shraim, chief information security officer and vice president of anti-fraud engineering and operations at MarkMonitor.

Meanwhile, the number of unique phishing sites detected by the APWG reached an all-time monthly high of 63,253 in April, eclipsing the previous record high of 56,859 in February of this year by more than 11 percent.

The full text of the report is available here: http://apwg.org/reports/apwg_trends_report_q2_2012.pdf

Other highlights of the Q2, 2012 report include:

• The total number of URLs used to host phishing attacks increased to 175,229 in Q2 2012, up from 164,023 in Q1 2012.
• Financial Services continued to be the most-targeted industry sector in the second quarter of 2012.
• Four out of every five new malware specimens created were Trojans (78.92 percent).
• For the first time, South Korea led the ranking of countries most infected by malware (57.30 percent of infected PCs), followed by China (51.94 percent).
• In the second quarter of 2012, more than six million unique malware samples were identified.
• During the second quarter, the USA remained the top hosting country of phishing-based Trojans, consistent from the first quarter of the year.

These and other findings will be discussed at the APWG’s Fall General Members Meeting and Research Summit this October 22-25 in Puerto Rico. Details can be found here: http://apwg.org/events/2012_ecrime.html

APWG’s conference next week represents an unprecedented summit of global authorities, coordinating the efforts of cybercrime managers, responders, investigators and researchers in collaboration with the IEEE, world’s largest professional technology association, the Organization of American States (OAS) – and ICANN, the manager of the Internet’s identifier system of names and numbers.

“We witness in this fall’s conference a striking coordination of the world’s major cybercrime response authorities from the technical, standards and diplomatic realms,” said APWG Secretary General Peter Cassidy. “In every dimension of this global confrontation, this Fall’s summit is an unprecedented alignment of global institutions in the fight against cybercrime.”

About the APWG

The APWG, founded in 2003 as the Anti-Phishing Working Group, is the global industry, law enforcement, and government coalition focused on unifying the global response to electronic crime. Membership is open to qualified financial institutions, online retailers, ISPs and Telcos, the law enforcement community, solutions providers, multi-lateral treaty organizations, research centers, trade associations and government agencies. There are more than 2,000 companies, government agencies and NGOs participating in the APWG worldwide. The APWG's www.apwg.org and education.apwg.org websites offer the public, industry and government agencies practical information about phishing and electronically mediated fraud as well as pointers to pragmatic technical solutions that provide immediate protection. The APWG is co-founder and co-manager of the Stop. Think. Connect. Messaging Convention, the global online safety public awareness collaborative www.stopthinkconnect.org and founder/curator of the eCrime Researchers Summit, the world’s only peer-reviewed conference dedicated specifically to electronic crime studies www.ecrimeresearch.org.

Among APWG's corporate sponsors are as follows: Afilias Ltd., AhnLab, AT&T(T), Avast!, AVG Technologies, BBN Technologies, Barracuda Networks, BillMeLater, Bkav, Booz Allen Hamilton, Blue Coat, BrandMail, BrandProtect, Bsecure Technologies, Check Point Software Technologies, Comcast, CSIRTBANELCO, Cyber Defender, Cyveillance, Domain Tools, Donuts.co, Easy Solutions, eBay/PayPal (EBAY), eCert, EC Cert, ESET, EST Soft, Facebook, Fortinet, FraudWatch International, F-Secure, GlobalSign, GoDaddy, Google, GroupIB, Hauri, Hitachi Systems, Ltd., Huawei Symantec, ICANN, Iconix, IID, IronPort, ING Bank, Intuit, IT Matrix, Kindsight, LaCaixa, Lenos Software, MailShell, MarkMonitor, M86Security, McAfee (MFE), Melbourne IT, MessageLevel, Microsoft (MSFT), MicroWorld, Mirapoint, MyPW, nProtect Online Security, Netcraft, Network Solutions, NeuStar, Nominet, Nominum, Public Interest Registry, Panda Software, Phishlabs, Phishme.com, Phorm, Planty.net, Prevx, Proofpoint, QinetiQ, Return Path, RSA Security (EMC), RuleSpace, SAIC (From Science to Solutions), SalesForce, SecureBrain, S21sec, SIDN, SoftForum, SoftLayer, SoftSecurity, SOPHOS, SunTrust, SurfControl, Symantec (SYMC), Tagged, TDS Telecom, Telefonica (TEF), TransCreditBank, Trend Micro (TMIC), Vasco (VDSI), VeriSign (VRSN), Websense Inc. (WBSN), Wombat Security Technologies, Yahoo! (YHOO), zvelo and ZYNGA.