The Hindu Business Line : Phishing attacks targeting Indians: F-Secure

F-Secure Corporation’s summary of ‘data security’ threats during the first half of 2007 has revealed that the architects behind malwares generally seek to build sustainable commercial economy on carefully crafted attacks.

The Helsinki-headquartered company — while admitting that such attacks are being targeted at all user groups, including corporations and public sector institutions — observed that phishing attacks were more popular among Indian users due to rising Internet penetration and growing online transactions.

The study has found the banking industry as soft target for phishing scams. “As defences mature, attackers develop Trojans that are equipped with content filters to detect online banking activity for capturing account details using methods such as form grabbing, screen shots, video captures, keylogging and injection of form fields. The Trojans not only capture data but also intercept local sessions and change transaction details,” says Mr Patrik Runald, Senior Security Specialist, F-Secure.

Emerging trend

Yet another emerging trend has been ‘social engineering’ attacks, developed with great sophistication, causing havoc via the email by linking to real-life events such as the ‘January Storms in Europe’.

Besides this, the summary also observed how various Estonian sites targeted via centralised Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), disrupted the Web traffic by attacking vulnerable sites.

It has also found mobile Trojans and spyware increasingly complex to support development of the malicious economy and cautioned users to protect computers as also their PC Network from worms and viruses.

While reassuring users of its protection tools against such malwares, F-Secure has preferred to give tips to users to help them avoid phishing attacks.