The number of banking brands impersonated by phishing e-mails hit an all-time high of 225 in March, RSA Security Inc. reported.
The security division of the Hopkinton, Mass., data storage vendor EMC Corp. said in its monthly Online Fraud Report, issued last week, that many criminals are using increasingly sophisticated techniques to extract financial data from customers.
The so-called Rock Phish gang, for example, which was estimated to be responsible for more than half of phishing attacks worldwide last month, is using a combination of techniques, including spam e-mails, botnets to relay phishing messages, and "hash busting" — a technique that hides random text in an e-mail, making it difficult for spam filters to identify.
"While none of these techniques [is] necessarily new, using them together has helped Rock Phish infiltrate thousands of mail servers," RSA's antifraud center said in its report.
