BIRMINGHAM, Ala.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The new Global Phishing Survey released by APWG today at the
association’s annual research conference shows that Apple is the most
phished brand in the world, accounting for 17 percent of all phishing
reports sampled and analyzed from the first half of 2014.
Apple’s brand and associated marques, such as iTunes and iPad, eclipsed
perennial phishing target favorite PayPal with the computing device
manufacturer enduring 21,951 of the 123,741 phishing reports sampled
PayPal was the second most phished brand, targeted in 17,811 attacks, or
14.4 percent of the half’s sample. The Chinese marketplace Taobao was
third with 16,418 attacks, or 13.2 percent of the sampled attacks.
“As the world’s most valuable brand with a massive on-line user base,
Apple has always been a phishing target, and with phishers concentrating
more and more on online account takeover, consumers’ Apple ID’s are a
tempting target,” said Rod Rasmussen, President and CTO of IID and the
survey’s co-author.
“As Apple provides more services and devices tied to one’s Apple ID,
including the just announced Apple Pay, it is no surprise that phishers
are increasing their efforts to fool consumers into divulging their
credentials, regardless of additional security measures Apple puts in
place to protect their customers,” Rasmussen said.
The report found cybercrime gangs are aggressively pursuing brand
diversity in their online fraud schemes, spoofing and otherwise
leveraging the identities of some 756 institutions, the highest number
the analysts had yet encountered
“If a site takes in personal data like passwords or credit card
information, then phishers may want to exploit it,” said Greg Aaron,
President of Illumintel and the survey’s other co-author. “We’re seeing
an unprecedented breadth of targets — cloud storage sites, utility
companies, business service providers, and real estate brokerages.”
Of the 87,901 domains used for phishing, the report identified some
22,679 domains, a quarter of the total sample, that the authors believe
were registered maliciously by phishers.
The number is primarily due to registrations by Chinese-based phishers
targeting Chinese brands who prefer cheap (and free) domain name
registrations in certain TLDs. The other 65,222 domains were almost all
hacked or compromised on vulnerable Web hosting.
The complete report is available here: http://docs.apwg.org/reports/APWG_Global_Phishing_Report_1H_2014.pdf
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 APWG Symposium on Electronic Crime Research,
the world’s only peer-reviewed conference dedicated specifically to
electronic crime studies www.ecrimeresearch.org.