Phishing Attacks Become More Acute and Globally Diverse

VeriSign, Inc., a provider of intelligent infrastructure services for the Internet and telecommunications networks, recently released the third edition of the VeriSign Internet Security Intelligence Briefing. It included some interesting statistics related to phishing scams:

-- In a sample of 490 phishing e-mails, targeting customers of
16 companies, VeriSign found that 93 percent were sent from forged
or spoofed e-mail addresses; 5 percent came from sites making no
attempt to disguise their destination, and 2 percent came from
"cousin" sites, which closely mimic the company site they are
seeking to imitate.

-- 37 percent of phishing e-mails directed users to capture sites
located outside the United States, with a concentration in Korea,
China, Poland, Brazil, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia and Indonesia.

-- VeriSign found the majority of phishing attacks were launched
between 9:00 p.m. -- 4:00 a.m., when IT staffers are often on call
or fewer in numbers.