Financial cyberattacks on the way up

According to data from threat management solutions developer Kaspersky Lab, this fraudulent scheme, also knows as phishing, targeted more financial institutions in 2013, when the number of attacks on banking websites, online stores and e-payment systems increased to 31.45% from the 22.95% recorded in 2012.

The same source unveils that in 2013, in the Philippines, banks were the most attractive targets, which accounted for 70.6 % of all financial phishing activities, a sharp increase from the 52% recorded in 2012. Overall, the number of phishing attacks targeting banks almost doubled from 11.92% in 2012 to 22.2% in 2013. On the other hand, the number of attacks on online stores increased insignificantly by 8.5 percentage points while those targeting payment systems dropped by 2.63 percentage points.

Phishing is a form of cybercrime which involves stealing confidential data from a user’s computer and subsequently using the data to steal the user’s money.

To get a big profit, phishing websites aimed at getting users financial details mainly use the brand names of e-payment systems and online banking systems as well as popular companies and online stores.

Among e-payment systems, the favourite targets of phishers has involved one of these four international brands: PayPal, American Express, Master Card and Visa. For several years, the names of online stores which were the most popular covers for phishing attacks worldwide were Amazon, Apple and Ebay.