Phishing Attacks Primary Target May Surprise You

Kaspersky Lab, a provider of antivirus and Internet security software, recently published its review of e-mail spam malicious attacks across 2012.  The results are a classic mix of good news and bad news.

First, the good news.  The amount of e-mail spam fell throughout the course of the year.  By the end of the year, the average amount of spam in email stood at 72.1 percent, down 8.2 percent over 2011.   Meanwhile, 3.4 percent of emails contained malicious attachments.

Now for the bad news.  You would think the top target for phishing attacks would be banks and financial institutions.  And for many years, that was the case.  No longer.  In 2012, the top target – at approximately 25% – was social media networks.  And most attacks were launched on – you guessed it – Facebook.  The bad guys would gain access to the user’s account and then send spam and malware to the user’s friend list.

What makes these attacks so difficult to stop is the fact that they are social and not technical in nature. All it takes is a convincing phishing e-mail to expose the user, and by extension, dozens, if not hundreds of their friends.