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 cited by VietNamNet Bridge, 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 2011-2012. In particular,
users in Russia, the US, India, Vietnam and the UK are most frequently
attacked. Kaspersky found that in 2012, Vietnam, the US, 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.-VNA