Phishing Activity Trends Report

Q1/2008

Committed to Wiping Out
Internet Scams and Fraud

January – March 2008

Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008
Phishing Report Scope
The quarterly APWG Phishing Activity Trends Reportanalyzes phishing attacks reported to the APWG by its
member companies, Global Research Partners, theorganization’s website at http://www.antiphishing.org
and by email submissions toreportphishing@antiphishing.org. APWG also measuresthe evolution, proliferation and propagation ofcrimeware drawing from the research of our member
companies. In the last half of this report you will findtabulations of crimeware statistics.

Crimeware-Spreading URLs Rise Swiftly in
Q1, 2008 – Nearly Doubling Previous HighPhishing Defined
Phishing is a criminal mechanism employing both social
engineering and technical subterfuge to steal consumers’
personal identity data and financial account credentials.
Social-engineering schemes use spoofed e-mails
purporting to be from legitimate businesses and agencies
to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed totrick recipients into divulging financial data such asusernames and passwords. Technical-subterfuge
schemes plant crimeware onto PCs to steal credentials
directly, often using systems to intercept consumers
online account user names and passwords - and tocorrupt local navigational infrastructures to misdirect
consumers to counterfeit websites (or authentic websites
through phisher-controlled proxies used to monitor andintercept consumers’ keystrokes).

Numbers of crimeware-spreading URLs infecting PCs withpassword-stealing code rose 93 percent in Q1, 2008 to 6,500 sites,
nearly double the previous high of November, 2007 - and anincrease of 337 percent from the number detected end of Q1, 2007.
Details on page 8.

Q1 2008 Phishing Activity Trends Summary
Numbers of unique phishing reports submitted to
APWG declined by 12.5% by the end of the period, after
a spike in February, attributable to IRS-related attacks
Unique phishing websites detected by APWG ended
down by 12 percent from January, at 25,630 in March,spiking in February to 36,002, due to IRS-related attacks

Table of Contents
Statistical Highlights for Q1, 20083

Phishing Email Reports and Phishing Site Trends

4

Brand-Domain Pairs Measurement

5

Most Used Ports Hosting Phishing Data
Collection Servers in Q1 2008

6

Brands & Legitimate Entities Hijacked by
Email Phishing Attacks

6

Most Targeted Industry Sectors

7

Countries Hosting Phishing Sites

7

Phishing-based Trojans – Keyloggers in Q1 20088

Phishing-based Trojans & Downloader’s Host
Countries (by IP address)

2

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APWG Phishing Trends Report Contributors:
Websense, Activity
MarkMonitor,& PandaSoftwareQ1 10
Phishing
TrendsReport2008
www.apwg.org info@apwg.org

The number of hijacked brands rose from 131 to 141
within the period, well within the average for the year
Financial Services was the most targeted sector during
the quarter, running between 92 and 94 percent
While the United States remains the top country hosting
phishing sites, China dropped to fifth at the end of theperiodThe number of unique Keyloggers and malicious code
applications detected rose to a record 430 in the period

Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008
Methodology
APWG is continuing to refine and develop our tracking and reporting methodology. We have re-instated thetracking and reporting of unique phishing reports (email campaigns) in addition to unique phishing sites. An email
campaign is a unique email sent out to multiple users, directing them to a specific phishing web site (multiple
campaigns may point to the same web site). APWG counts unique phishing report emails as those in a given monthwith the same subject line in the email.
APWG also tracks the number of unique phishing websites. This is now determined by the unique base URLs of thephishing sites.
APWG is also tracking crimeware instances (unique software applications as determined by MD5 hash of thecrimeware sample) as well as unique sites that are distributing crimeware (typically via browser drive-by exploits).

Statistical Highlights for Q1 2008
January

February

March

Number of unique phishing reports received

29,28430,71625,630

Number of unique phishing sites received

20,30536,002

24,908

Number of brands hijacked by phishing campaigns

131

139

141

Country hosting the most phishing websites

US

US

US

Contain some form of target name in URL

28.3%

23.2%

26.1%

No hostname; just IP address

5.5%

13.2%

4%

Percentage of sites not using port 80

.81%

.45%

.49%

Longest time online for website

31 days

29 days

31 days3

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Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008
Phishing Email Reports and Phishing Site Trends for Q1 2008
The number of unique phishing reports submitted to APWG in the first quarter of 2008 remained within a range ofslightly over 5,000 unique reports. Over the quarter, reports received decreased by 12.5 percent ending at 25,630 inMarch, after a spike of attacks in February when the number rose to 30,716. The number at the close of the quarter is
off from the high of September 2007 by 33 percent. This represents a count of unique phishing email reports received
by the APWG from the general public, APWG members, and its research partners.

The number of unique phishing websites detected by APWG during the first quarter of 2008 saw a massive increaseduring the month of February, an increase of more than 77 percent from January 2008. However, a decrease of over
31 percent occurred during March, reflecting the cessation of seasonal IRS-related attacks.

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Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008
Brand-Domain Pairs Measurement for Q1 2008
The following chart combines statistics based on brands phished, unique domains, unique domain/brand pairs, andunique URLs. Brand/domain pairs count the unique instances of a domain being used to target a specific brand.
Example: if several URLs are targeting a brand – but are hosted on the same domain – this brand/domain pair would
be counted as one instead of several.
Forensic utility: If the number of unique URLs is greater than the number of brand/domain pairs, it indicates many
URLs are being hosted on the same domain to target the same brand. Knowing how many URLs occur with eachdomain indicates the approximate number of attacking domains a brand-holding victim needs to locate andneutralize. Since Phishing-prevention technologies (like browser and email blocking) require the full URL, it isuseful to understand the general number of unique URLs that occur per domain.
Unique brand-domain pairs rose steadily
throughout the sampling period fromJanuary through March, moving from
6,682 to 7,584.
John LaCour, CISSP, Director of
AntiPhishing Solutions at MarkMonitor
and APWG Phishing Activity Trends
Report contributing analyst said,“Phishers seem inexhaustible.”“While the number of unique URLs
declined by nearly a third due to lower
rock phish activity, the actual number ofattacks as measured by a combination ofbrand and phishing domain names
increased 11%. This indicates thattraditional phishing is as strong as everand increasing,” Mr. LaCour concluded.

January

February

March

Unique URLs

20,30536,002

24,908Unique Domains

5,490

5,671

6,271

Unique Brand-Domain Pairs

6,682

6,861

7,584

Unique Brands

131

139

141

URLs Per Brand

155

259

177

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Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008
Most Used Ports Hosting Phishing Data Collection Servers in Q1 2008
The first quarter of 2008 saw a continuation of HTTP port 80 being the most popular port used of all phishing sites
reported, a trend that has been consistent since APWG began tracking and reporting.
January

February

March

Port 80

99.23%

Port 80

99.57%

Port 80

99.48%

Port 443.28%

Port 82.17%

Port 443.20%

Port 84.20%

Port 443.12%

Port 81.09%

Port 82.17%

Port 8080.07%

Port 82.07%

Port 88.04%

Port 4100.04%

Port 84.05

3 other.08%

2 other.03%

4 other.11%

Brands & Legitimate Entities Hijacked By Email Phishing Attacks in Q1 2008
The first quarter of 2008 saw a rise of 7.6 percent from 131 to 141 in the number of hijacked brands victimized within
the period. Consistently, brands remain in the 120-160 range, illustrating that attacks are directed at consistent typesof targets. The end-of-quarter number is still 20 percent off the high of 178 in November, 2007.

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Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008
Most Targeted Industry Sectors in Q1 2008
Financial Services continues to be the most targeted industry sector during the first quarter of 2008. This isconsistent with results since the APWG began tracking targeted industry sectors. The uptick of Government as atarget in March reflects a rise in IRS-related phishing attacks or similar scams – by phishing and other media –related to the IRS-administered 2008 Economic Stimulus Refund program.
January

February

March

Financial Services

92.4%

94.2%

92.9%

Retail

1.5%

1.4%

1.4%

ISPs

3.8%

2.2%

1.4%

Government and Others

2.3%

2.2%

4.3%

Countries Hosting Phishing Sites in Q1 2008
Q1 2008 saw the continuation of the United States remaining the top country hosting phishing sites due to a large
majority of attacks being targeted toward United States-based companies. Russia remained in the top four of all
countries throughout the period. There was an interesting drop for China in the last month, when they only
rendered 3% of top countries hosting websites.
January

February

March

United States

37.28%

United States

27.11%

United States

38.23%

Russia11.66%

China

19.25%

Russia10.58%

China

10.30%

Canada12.66%

France

6.38%

Germany

5.64%

Russia10.22%

Germany

4.71%

Romania

5.09%

France

3.39%

United Kingdom

4.49%

Republic of Korea

3.76%

Germany

2.94%

China

3.07%

France3.28%

Turkey2.59%

Lebanon

2.48%

Canada

1.94%

Republic of Korea

2.23%

Canada2.28%

United Kingdom

1.91%

Indonesia

2.08%

Italy

1.96%

Italy

1.59%

United Kingdom

2.04%

Republic of Korea

1.87%

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Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008

Crimeware Taxonomy & Samples According to Classification
The APWG’s Crimeware statistics categorizes crimeware attacks as follows, though the taxonomy will grow as
variations in attack code are spawned:
Definition: Crimeware code which is designed with the intent of collecting information on the end-user in order tosteal those users' credentials. Unlike most generic keyloggers, phishing-based keyloggers have tracking components
which attempt to monitor specific actions (and specific organizations, most importantly financial institutions, online
retailers, and e-commerce merchants) in order to target specific information. The most common types of
information are: access to financial-based websites, ecommerce sites, and web-based mail sites.

Phishing-based Trojans – Keyloggers in Q1 2008
The number of Crimeware-spreading URLs
detected rose from 3,362 in January to a record
6,500 in March. This rise represented an increaseof nearly 86 percent from the previous record of
3,500 in November, 2007. The number ofcrimeware-spreading URLs reported at the end of
this period was 337 percent higher than the same
period in 2007.
Websense Chief Technology Officer and APWG
Phishing Activity Trends Report contributing
analyst Dan Hubbard said that this rise can be
attributed to the increase in mass SQL injection
attacks that have been on the rise this year.

The number of unique keyloggers and crimewareoriented malicious applications detected during theperiod rose steadily, ending at 430, an all-time
record some 18 percent greater than the number
recorded in the previous record month of January,
2008, when 364 unique malicious applications weredetected. Criminal hackers have apparently
redoubled their efforts to develop new techniquesand scripts to bypass security measures taken by
consumers and enterprises.

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Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008

Phishing-based Trojans – Redirectors
Definition: Crimeware code which is designed with the intent of redirecting end-users’ network traffic to a location
where it was not intended to go to. This includes crimeware that changes hosts files and other DNS-specificinformation, crimeware browser-helper objects that redirect users to fraudulent sites, and crimeware that may installa network level driver or filter to redirect users to fraudulent locations. All of these must be installed with theintention of compromising information which could lead to identify theft or other credentials being taken withcriminal intent.
Along with phishing-based keyloggers, we are seeing high increases in traffic redirectors. In particular, the highest
volume is in malicious code which simply modifies your DNS server settings or your hosts file to redirect eithersome specific DNS lookups or all DNS lookups to a fraudulent DNS server. The fraudulent server replies with“good” answers for most domains; however, when they want to direct you to a fraudulent one, they simply modify
their name server responses. This is particularly effective because the attackers can redirect any of the users requests
at any time and the end-users have very little indication that this is happening as they could be typing in the addresson their own and not following an email or Instant Messaging lure.

Phishing-based Trojans & Downloader’s Hosting Countries (by IP address)
The chart below represents a breakdown of the websites which were classified during Q1 2008 as hosting malicious
code in the form of either a phishing-based keylogger or a Trojan downloader which downloads a keylogger.
January

February

March

United States

43.39%

United States

38.55%

United States

46.21%

China

16.95%

China

11.59%

China

11.41%

France6.89%

Republic of Korea

10.38%

Republic of Korea

7.38%

United Kingdom

5.92%

Russia8.15%

Russia

7.25%

Republic of Korea

5.84%

Poland

7.77%

Poland

6.32%

Russia

4.46%

Romania

6.75%

Romania

4.90%

Spain

3.81%

India

5.77%

India

4.77%

Poland3.41%

Germany

4.28%

Germany

4.42%

Romania

3.24%

France

3.49%

France

3.93%

Germany

3.16%

Argentina

3.26%

Argentina

3.42%

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Phishing Activity Trends Report, Q1 2008
Phishing Report Contributors

MarkMonitor is the global
leader in delivering
comprehensive online
corporate identity protection
services, with a focus on
making the Internet safe foronline transactions.

PandaLabs is an international
network of research andtechnical support centersdevoted to protecting users
against malware.

Websense Security Labs’
mission is to discover,investigate, and report onadvanced internet threats toprotect employee computing
environments.

The Phishing Attack Trends Report is published quarterly by the APWG, an industry and law enforcement
association focused on eliminating the identity theft and fraud that result from the growing problem of phishing,crimeware, and email spoofing. For further information, please contact APWG Deputy Secretary General Foy
Shiver at 404.434.7282. For media inquiries please contact APWG Deputy Secretary General Foy Shiver at
404.434.7282 or Cas Purdy at 858.320.9493 or cpurdy@websense.com or Te Smith at 831.818.1267 or
Te.Smith@markmonitor.com. APWG thanks its contributing members, above, for data and analyses in thisreport.

About the APWG
The APWG, founded as the Anti-Phishing Working Group in 2003, is an industry association focused on eliminating theidentity theft and fraud that result from the growing problem of phishing and email spoofing. The organization provides
a forum to discuss phishing issues, define the scope of the phishing problem in terms of hard and soft costs andconsequences, and to share information and best practices for eliminating the problem. Where appropriate, the APWG
will also look to share this information with law enforcement.
Membership is open to qualified financial institutions, online retailers, ISPs, the law enforcement community, andsolutions providers. There are more than 1,800 companies and government agencies participating in the APWG and morethan 3,000 members. Note that because phishing attacks and email fraud are sensitive subjects for many organizations
that do business online, the APWG has a policy of maintaining the confidentiality of member organizations.
The website of the APWG is http://www.antiphishing.org. It serves as a public and industry resource for information
about the problem of phishing and email fraud, including identification and promotion of pragmatic technical solutions
that can provide immediate protection and benefits against phishing attacks. The APWG, a 501c6 tax-exempted
corporation, was founded by Tumbleweed Communications and a number of member banks, financial services
institutions, and e-commerce providers. It held its first meeting in November 2003 in San Francisco and in June 2004 wasincorporated as an independent corporation controlled by its steering committee, its board of directors, and its executives.

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