India, which earns the sobriquet of IT super power, continues to hold another distinction, dubious though. It retains its leadership in the list of top spam originating countries in the world with a share of 11.5 per cent.
The first six spam hubs in Kaspersky's latest report for January are from Asia and Latin America, followed by Italy and the UK.
Financial and e-payment organisations were the worst victims of phishing attacks. “It also includes e-pay systems such as universal credit card associations as well as credit institutions, unit trusts and investment companies,” the Russian anti-virus solutions firm said.
Online stores and e-auctions was the second major group that attracted by hackers most. “User accounts in many online stores are aligned with their credit cards and contain personal information such as name, email id, address and telephone number,” the report said.
When making a purchase in a fake online store a user enters his credit card information which then becomes the trophy of the fraudsters. “No wonder, then, 20 per cent of all anti-phishing component detections fell on phishing attacks targeting different stores and auctions,” the report said.
The other happy hunting ground for hackers is social networking sites. User accounts on these sites remain attractive for fraudsters as they have great demand on the black market.
Emails and IMS (instant messaging system) accounts too are in great demand as they are very popular in the underground market. Users registered on mass media sites too are a target for attacks. “These accounts may be somehow aligned with social networking accounts that are the real targets of hackers,” the report said.
The security solutions firm also noticed a seasonal kind of attack such as taxes. “Accounts of users registered on government sites too are a target. Most of the attacks are launched when tax returns are due to be filed in the US and the UK. Because the tax organisations in these countries are the phishers' preferred targets among all government agencies,” it said.