According to the security firm's Annual Email Management and
Security Report, in the course of 2004 it intercepted a total
of more than 18 million phishing e-mails and has seen the
development of new techniques to increase the success rate of
attacks.
These techniques include e-mails that capture on-line banking
details automatically when a user opens the e-mail, rather than
when the user clicks on links within messages. Attackers have also
tried to dupe unsuspecting users into becoming middlemen for money
laundering operations.
The report suggests that the increase in phishing-related
on-line identity theft may signal the beginning of a wave of e-mail
attacks targeted at individuals and small groups of companies.
This, says the firm, puts business firmly on the front line in the
fight against on-line attacks.
"We believe that the singling out of certain companies to be the
victim of phishing attacks could signal the beginning of a wider
trend," said Mark Sunner, Chief Technology Officer of MessageLabs.
"Already, particular businesses are being threatened and
blackmailed, which could indicate a shift from random, scattergun
approaches to customised attacks designed to take advantage of the
perceived weaknesses of some businesses."
More traditional security threats are still a problem, with spam
and virus attacks also increasing over the last 12 months.
During the year, says MessageLabs, the e-mail virus infection
average ratio was 1 in 16, compared to 2003 when it was 1 in 33.
The most widespread outbreak of 2004 was W32/MyDoom.A, which hit in
January, while the average percentage of e-mail identified as spam
in 2004 was 73%, with figures peaking at 94.5% in July; in 2003,
the average was 40%.
MessageLabs also witnessed tailored malicious activity ranging
from blackmailing on-line gaming sites with Denial of Service
attacks to threats to send out child pornography in the name of a
particular organisation. Recent evidence also suggests that Trojans
and other malicious code have been developed during the year
specifically to compromise particular organisations, a trend that
MessageLabs expects to continue in 2005.
As well as the threat from targeted fraud, MessageLabs sees the
other key issue facing IT departments and executives as regulatory
compliance.
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