Woburn, MA – July 15, 2014 – Kaspersky Lab has found that the monthly average of phishing wildcards[1] added to its anti-phishing database has increased 17.5 percent compared to last year. According to the calculations, in 2013 there was an average of 96,609 new phishing wildcards per month, but so far in the first half of 2014 the average number is up to 113,500 per month. Not only is Kaspersky Lab seeing more false links, but also these links are deliberately taken down from websites quickly in attempt to avoid detection.
To combat this threat and ensure detection of phishing websites, including new ones, Kaspersky Lab’s anti-phishing technology combines several layers – a database of phishing wildcards on the endpoint, a constantly updated database in the cloud and heuristic analysis. If the URL is not listed in any database, the heuristic module looks for evidence of anything suspicious in both the URL and the HTML content of the website. There are almost 300 parameters which reliably indicate whether it is a phishing site or not. This helps users avoid these scams and protect their digital identity.
Seven additional steps to steer clear of phishing sites:
- Do not click links on suspicious sites or those you receive from untrusted sources via email
- Enter all addresses into the browser address bar manually
- Check the address bar immediately after downloading the page to ensure the domain name corresponds to the one you expect
- Check whether the site uses a secure connection
- If you have the slightest doubt about the authenticity of the site, do not enter your personal details in any circumstances
- To ensure the legitimacy of a page, contact the company via its official website
- Avoid entering your sensitive data while using a public Wi-Fi network
- Use an anti-phishing security solution
Quote:
Nadezhda Demidova, Content Analyst
Kaspersky Lab
“Phishing is a fairly simple way of tricking Internet users into handing over their personal and financial information. The attackers create new phishing links every minute and now phishing sites typically operate for just a few hours. This strategy is intended to make it impossible for their site to earn a bad reputation and take its place in the anti-phishing databases established by security companies. This in turn changes the rules of the game for developing anti-phishing products: now we must carefully monitor the relevance of the phishing wildcards stored in the database. We are working with ‘perishable’ malware so a quick reaction to every update is critical.”
About Kaspersky Lab
Kaspersky Lab is the world’s largest privately held vendor of endpoint protection solutions. The company is ranked among the world’s top four vendors of security solutions for endpoint users*. Throughout its more than 16-year history Kaspersky Lab has remained an innovator in IT security and provides effective digital security solutions for large enterprises, SMBs and consumers. Kaspersky Lab, with its holding company registered in the United Kingdom, currently operates in almost 200 countries and territories across the globe, providing protection for over 300 million users worldwide. Learn more at www.kaspersky.com.
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Media Contact
Sarah Bergeron
781.503.2615
sarah.bergeron@kaspersky.com
* The company was rated fourth in the IDC rating Worldwide Endpoint Security Revenue by Vendor, 2012. The rating was published in the IDC report "Worldwide Endpoint Security 2013–2017 Forecast and 2012 Vendor Shares (IDC #242618, August 2013). The report ranked software vendors according to earnings from sales of endpoint security solutions in 2012.
[1] A phishing wildcard is a set of symbols describing a group of links detected by the system as phishing links. One wildcard can detect several thousand active links to phishing pages.
