VietNamNet Bridge - In the latest survey conducted by Kaspersky Lab, in 2012, 37.3 million Internet users worldwide became victims of phishing. Vietnam is among the countries with the highest number of phishing victims.

According to the survey, the number of Internet users facing this type of attack increased by 87 percent, from 19.9 million to 37.3 million over the past 12 months. Facebook, Yahoo, Google and Amazon are the main targets of cyber criminals. This study was carried out in June 2013, based on data from the Kaspersky Security Network cloud services.

Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. Phishing emails may contain links to websites that are infected with malware. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to deceive users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. Attempts to deal with the growing number of reported phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures.

For a long time, phishing is considered as another form of spam. However, data from the survey confirmed that the scale of phishing attacks have reached a significant level that can be seen as a separate dangerous threat rather than a part of the spam.

In fact, email is no longer the most common dispersal mechanism because the survey showed that only 12 percent of attacks made via emails, while 88 percent of the remaining cases came from fake sites that users often click on while using web browser, instant messenger system (Skype ...) or other interactions with the computer.

According to Kaspersky, from 2012 to 2013, phishing attacks affected about 102,100 people around the world every day – doubling the number in the period 2011-2012. In particular, users in Russia, America, India, Vietnam and the UK are most frequently attacked. Kaspersky found that in 2012, Vietnam, the USA, India and Germany had the numbers of victims doubling from 2011.

The services of Yahoo!, Google, Facebook and Amazon are attacked by phishing most often with 30 percent of the fake versions of these sites are registered. In addition, more than 20 percent of phishing attacks mimic banks or financial institutions, including American Express, PayPal, Xbox Live, Twitter ... in the top 30 target sites.

Phong Minh