The most number of phishing e-mails originated in India last year, according to a report released by IBM.
IBM's annual ‘X-Force 2010 Trend and Risk Report' says India was the top country for phishing email origination in 2010 at 15.5 per cent, followed by Russia at 10.4 per cent. Spam has continued to grow in India from Spring 2009 to Autumn 2010.
The report highlights that the US, India, Brazil, and Vietnam were the top four spam-sending countries, accounting for nearly one-third of worldwide spam.
More than 8,000 new vulnerabilities were documented globally, a 27 per cent rise from 2009. This points to an expanding threat landscape in which sophisticated attacks are being launched against increasingly complex computing environments.
The historically high growth in spam volume levelled off by the end of 2010. This indicates that spammers may be seeing less value from increasing the volume of spam, and instead are focused on making sure it is bypassing filters.
While overall there were significantly fewer phishing attacks relative to previous years, “spear phishing,” a more targeted attack technique, grew in importance in 2010. This indicates that cyber criminals have become more focused on quality of attacks, rather than quantity, says the report.
As adoption of smartphones and other mobile devices increased, IT security departments have struggled to determine the right way to bring these devices safely into corporate networks. Although attacks against the latest generation of mobile devices were not widely prevalent in 2010, IBM X-Force data showed a rise in vulnerability disclosures and exploits that target these devices.
“From Stuxnet to Zeus botnets to mobile exploits, a widening variety of attack methodologies is popping up each day,” said Mr Pradeep Nair, Director, IBM Software Group, IBM ISA.
“The numerous, high profile targeted attacks in 2010 shed light on a crop of highly sophisticated cyber criminals, who may be well-funded and operating with knowledge of security vulnerabilities that no one else has. Staying ahead of these growing threats and designing software and services that are secure from the start has never been more critical. We have seen significant increase in interest from clients in India to enhance the reliability of their security infrastructure.”