Phishing attacks on Indian brands increasing

By siliconindia   |   Friday, 25 September 2009, 14:45 IST   |    1 Comments
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New Delhi: To solicit personal information from individuals and to launch money laundering scams, cyber criminals are targeting Indian brands for phishing attacks, according to security software firm Symantec. Phishing is an attempt by a third party to solicit confidential information from an individual, group or organization by mimicking, or spoofing, a specific well-known brand, usually for financial gain. "Phishing is a growing menace in the Indian cybercrime scenario. With high traffic on the websites of Indian brands, we are seeing that their popularity is being targeted for phishing attacks as well," said Shantanu Ghosh, Vice-President (Product Operations) at Symantec India. Phishing attacks have seen a rise in recent months with the first two weeks of August witnessing a four-fold increase from 0.05 percent to two percent of the overall attacks on Indian brands, he added. Symantec has released a list categorizing various phishing attacks like dynamic phishing (where the user clicks on a malicious links) and flash phishing where the hacker mimics the advertisement of a reputed company and directs the user to a fake phishing website. The company estimates that in the last two years, over a 1,000 unique phishing attacks have been carried out on reputable Indian banks.

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