The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) said there were
13,353 phishing email messages reported in March 2005.
This is an increase of 2% on the number of reports for February,
and over five times the number of reports from July
2004 (2,625).
The number of phishing websites supporting these attacks grew
faster, rising 6.9% from February (2,686) to 2,870.
In March, the number of reported hijacked website brands rose to
78. The APWG said nine of these brands were owned by financial
institutions.
The APWG said it was also seeing an increase in phishing
attempts that used malware downloaded onto users’ machines, once
they had visited bogus websites.
Such code can include keylogging software, used to remotely
capture keystrokes from users’ keyboards, to allow fraud to take
place.
