Kaspersky Lab, in its latest study, has found that about one third (31.45 percent) of phishing attacks targeted online financial institutions including, banks, online stores and e-payment systems.
Among attacks on e-payment systems, almost 90 percent of phishing attacks in this category fell on one of five international brands: PayPal, American Express, MasterCard International, Visa or Western Union. PayPal was the leading brand exploited, as the amount of attacks on this system reached 44.12 percent.
Of those financial phishing attacks, 70.6 percent used fake bank webpages to acquire confidential user information and steal money from bank accounts, showing the strong trend of cyber criminals exploiting online financial services, the study revealed.
Most phishing attacks used the brand names of popular banks. In 2013, the most popular phishing attacks used fake bank websites, which were involved in twice as many attacks in 2013 as they were in 2012. Within the 70.6 percent of phishing attacks using banks in 2013, about 60 percent exploited the names of just 25 organizations.
Major companies with large client databases are also in the target list of cybercriminals.
Popular online stores are also vulnerable to cybercrimes. For several years in a row, Amazon.com has been the most popular – over the reported period, Amazon was used in 61 percent of phishing attacks in this category, with Apple (12.89 percent) and eBay (12 percent) following.
The alarming growth in cyber threat has also resulted in significant rise in customers for the company. In 2013, Kaspersky Lab products protected about 39.6 million users from this cyber threat, an increase of 2.32 percent from 2012.
The ‘Financial Cyber Threats in 2013’ report used data obtained voluntarily from Kaspersky Security Network participants, the company said.
