NEW YORK - Cyber-crime activity continued to climb in March, according to new data released by RSA’s Anti-fraud Command Center.
The command center said it once again focused its attention on the Rock Phish gang, a group of cyber-criminals estimated to be accountable for more than 50% of phishing attacks world-wide and alleged to have taken tens of millions of dollars from bank accounts. “Their continued success is attributed to a variety of techniques including spam-e-mails, botnets to relay phishing messages, and the use of “Hash Busting”–a technique in which random text is hidden in an email to create a unique message making it difficult for filters to identify the email as spam,” said RSA.
While none of these techniques are necessarily new, RSA said that together they have helped Rock Phish infiltrate thousands of mail servers. Among the other findings:
* 69% of U.S. banking brands have been attacked by phishing, an increase of 10% over last month’s banking brands that had been subjected to botnet attacks. RSA Anti-Fraud center also noted that phishing increased in both Australia and New Zealand in March.
* 225 brands were attacked in March 2008, an all-time record high in terms of the number of targeted institutions. This record was due to a spread of phishing across new verticals and geographical regions, according to RSA. In addition, 16 new financial institutions were attacked in March.
* 42* of credit unions, 35% of regional banks, and 23% of national banks were targeted during the month.
* These numbers continue to shift dramatically from month to month. The U.S continues to be the top hosting country, accounting for 63% of hosted attacks. Canada and Hong Kong were absent in March, while the Netherlands and Italy took their places.
