Australia becomes number one global target for phishing attacks

A report conducted by Kaspersky Lab reveals that Australia almost doubled its share of global phishing attacks, making it the world’s most targeted country for phishing attacks. The analysis of August 2014 figures shows that the number of anti-phishing component activations on computers of Australian users doubled, accounting for nearly a quarter of the world’s total phishing attacks, at 24.4%.

Australia’s latest ranking has pushed Brazil (19.5%) down to second position. The UK (15.2%) and Canada (14.6%) came third and fourth respectively. August 2014 saw phishing activity increase by 62% with 32 million detections globally.

Experts have attributed this considerable growth in phishing attacks to the seasonal decline in the demand for advertising spam. Overall, the US ranked first among source countries of spam distributed around the world, while the UK now leads the ranking based on the number of users targeted by spammers sending malicious attachments. 

Cybercriminals who distributed malicious attachments in spam messages again used fake Facebook notifications as a lure for users. The spam messages indicated to users that the social networking website had been hacked, with the faux ‘developers’ asking users to install the utility attached in order to avoid problems in future.