Unique URLs Used for Phishing Increased 150% Over Five Months

Phishing is on the increase. It’s no surprise to most. This is because it works. People get a lot of email and those wishing to take advantage of email overload, over-stressed workers, and everyone trying to squeeze in one more task by the time they have to go home for the day are unwavering. The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is reporting that in a five month period, the number of distinct website links increased 150%.  What is interesting to note is that number of brands and websites used for these attacks is holding steady.

Domains alone are not typically the issue in malicious attacks. Usually, someone will find a way into the site and create various sub-domains within it. They then use those in the phishing emails they send out. The result is that it makes it more difficult for anti-spam filters to detect them and flag them as spam. It also means it is more difficult to shut down these sites. That means training the end-users becomes even more important, as it is not likely these types of attacks will slow down any time soon.

Training is more important as cyber criminals become more creative in how they subvert the security measures that are available to us. Everyone on the network should be regularly trained on how to identify phishing and what to do should they accidentally click a link that sends them to one of these malicious domains or open a malicious attachment. Everyone makes mistakes, so having a plan in place on how to react and making sure everyone knows that plan is key. Then test them. Training is always more effective if you know how well it’s working; or how well it isn’t. Then you can make adjustments accordingly.

That doesn’t mean that anti-spam and anti-malware software is of no use. In fact, it’s more important than ever. Spammers have figured out that the more email they send, the more likely they are to succeed at some point. So they simply overwhelm us by the number of messages they send out. Anti-spam and anti-malware tools still catch the vast majority of malicious email. However, these should be supported with training, multi-factor authentication tools, and other perimeter security tools to lower the risk as much as possible.