Phishing Activity Trends
Report for the Month of May, 2007
Summarization of May Report Findings► The number of unique phishing websites detected by APWG was 37,438 in May 2007, a drop of over
18,000 from April. ► The fluctuation in these numbers is attributable to the on-again, off-again trend of thephishers using multiple URLs on the same domain. For example, in April, 80% of all phish URLs used
multiple URLs per domain. In May that dropped to 41% of the URLs. ► The number of unique websites
hosting keyloggers hit an all time high in May at 3,353. ► APWG notes that in May there was a decreasein keylogger variants; however, there was a major increase in websites hosting crimeware. ► May 2007
saw a drop in hijacked brands to 149, after increases in the previous two months. ► The most targeted
brands in May are different from those in the preceeding few months, indicating the professional phishinggangs are changing their targets. ► The number of unique phishing reports submitted to APWG in May
came to 23,415, a drop of over 200 from April. ► Financial Services continue to be the most targetedindustry sector accounting for 96.9% of all attacks in the month of May. APWG notes that the IRS and one
tax preparation company were phished in May 2007, and there is evidence that smaller brokerages may
be getting phished.

Phishing Defined and Report Scope
Phishing is a form of online identity theft that employs both social engineering and technical subterfuge to steal
consumers' personal identity data and financial account credentials. Social-engineering schemes use 'spoofed' emails to lead consumers to counterfeit websites designed to trick recipients into divulging financial data such asaccount usernames and passwords. Hijacking brand names of banks, e-retailers and credit card companies, phishers
often convince recipients to respond. Technical subterfuge schemes plant crimeware onto PCs to steal credentials
directly, often using key logging systems to intercept consumers online account user names and passwords, and tocorrupt local and remote navigational infrastructures to misdirect consumers to counterfeit websites and to authentic
websites through phisher-controlled proxies that can be used to monitor and intercept consumers’ keystrokes.
The monthly Phishing Activity Trends Report analyzes phishing attacks reported to the Anti-Phishing Working Group(APWG) via its member companies, Global Research Partners, the organization’s website at
http://www.antiphishing.org and email submission to reportphishing@antiphishing.org. The APWG phishing attack
repository is the Internet’s most comprehensive archive of email fraud and phishing activity. The APWG additionallymeasures the evolution, proliferation and propagation of crimeware drawing from the independent research of ourmember companies. In the second half of this report are tabulations of crimeware statistics and reportage on specificcriminal software detected by our member researchers.

Statistical Highlights for May 2007••••••••••

Number of unique phishing reports received in May:
Number of unique phishing sites recorded in May:
Number of brands hijacked by phishing campaigns in May:
Number of brands comprising the top 80% of phishing campaigns in May:Country hosting the most phishing websites in May:
Contain some form of target name in URL:
No hostname just IP address:
Percentage of sites not using port 80:
Average time online for site:
Longest time online for site:

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org

23415
37438
149
11United States
15.5 %
6%
1.1 %3.8 days
30 daysMethodology
APWG is continuing to refine and develop our tracking and reporting methodology. We have recently 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, (multiplecampaigns 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 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).

Phishing Email Reports and Phishing Site Trends for May 2007
The total number of unique phishing reports submitted to APWG in May 2007 was 23,415, a drop of more than 200
from the previous month. This is a count of unique phishing email reports received by the APWG from the public, itsmembers and its research partners.

The Phishing Attack Trends Report is published monthly by the Anti-Phishing Working Group, an industry association focusedon eliminating the identity theft and fraud that result from the growing problem of phishing and email spoofing. For further
information, please contact APWG Secretary General Peter Cassidy at 617.669.1123. Analysis for the Phishing Attack Trends
Report has been donated by the following companies:

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org

The number of unique phishing websites detected by APWG was 37,438 in May 2007, a drop of over 18,000 fromApril. Laura Mather, Ph.D., Senior Scientist at MarkMonitor said, “The number of unique phish URLs in May dropped,
but remained at the high levels we were seeing last October and November. The fluctuation in the numbers is due tothe on-again-off-again trend of the Phishers using multiple URLs on the same domain. For example, in April, 80% of
all phish URLs used multiple URLs per domain. In May that dropped to 41% of the URLs. While the Phishers
continue to use the tactic of multiple URLs per domain, we will continue to see fluctuations in these numbers
depending on the number of brands being targeted with this technique."Top Used Ports Hosting Phishing Data Collection Servers in May 2007
May saw a continuation ofHTTP port 80 being the mostpopular port used at 99.02% of
all phishing sites reported.

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org

Brands & Legitimate Entities Hijacked By Email Phishing Attacks in May 2007
Number ofReported Brands
May 2007 saw a drop in hijackedbrands to 149, coming after two
consecutive months of increases.
Interestingly, the top several brandtargets are different from the last
few months which indicates that the
professional phishing gangs arechanging their targets, either in
response to some kind of increased
security employed at theestablished targets, or to exploit
some newly discovered weakness
at another brand's site.

Most Targeted Industry Sectors in May 2007
Financial Services continue tobe the most targeted industry
sector at 96.9% of all attacks inthe month of May.
"The IRS and one tax
preparation company werephished in May 2007, and there
is some evidence that smaller
brokerages may be getting
phished. This is something wewill keep our eye on to see if it isa trend," said David Jevans,
Chairman of the APWG.

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org

Web Phishing Attack Trends in May 2007
Countries Hosting Phishing Sites
In May, Websense® Security Labs™ saw the United States remain on the top of the list for countries hosting phishingwebsites with 32.41%. The rest of the top 10 breakdown is as follows: China 13%, Russia 7.41%, Republic of Korea
6.78%, Germany 4.15%, France 3.51%, Turkey 3.38%, United Kingdom 3.3%, Canada 3.29% and Italy with 1.97%.

PROJECT: Crimeware
Crimeware Taxonomy & Samples According to Classification in May 2007
PROJECT: Crimeware categorizes crimeware attacks as follows, though the taxonomy will grow as variations inattack code are spawned:

Phishing-based Trojans - Keyloggers
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 and online
retailers and ecommerce merchants) in order to target specific information, the most common are; access to financial
based websites, ecommerce sites, and web-based mail sites.

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org

Phishing-based Trojans – Keyloggers, Unique Variants in May

Phishing-based Trojans – Keyloggers, Unique Websites Hosting Keyloggers in May

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org

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 install anetwork level driver or filter to redirect users to fraudulent locations. All of these must be installed with the intention ofcompromising information which could lead to identify theft or other credentials being taken with criminal 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 either somespecific 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 nameserver 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 address on theirown and not following an email or Instant Messaging lure.

Phishing-based Trojans & Downloader’s Hosting Countries (by IP address) in May
The chart below represents a breakdown of the websites which were classified during May as hosting malicious codein the form of either a phishing-based keylogger or a Trojan downloader which downloads a keylogger.
The United States continues to be the top hosting country with 41%.
The rest of the breakdown was as follows; China 22%, Russia 6%, Republic of Korea 3%, Netherlands 3%, France2%, Malaysia 2%, Germany 2%, Sweden 2%, Italy 1%.

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org

Phishing Research Contributors

dMarkMonitor

PandaLabs

Websense Security Labs

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, andreport on advanced internet
threats to protect employee
computing environments.

For media inquiries please contact Peter Cassidy, APWG Secretary General at 617.669.1123 orpcassidy@antiphishing.org; Cas Purdy of Websense at 858.320.9493 or cpurdy@websense.com.and Te Smith ofMarkMonitor at 831.818.1269 or Te.Smith@markmonitor.com.

About the Anti-Phishing Working GroupThe Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is an industry association focused on eliminating the identity theft and fraudthat result from the growing problem of phishing and email spoofing. The organization provides a forum to discussphishing issues, define the scope of the phishing problem in terms of hard and soft costs, and share information andbest practices for eliminating the problem. Where appropriate, the APWG will also look to share this information withlaw enforcement.
Membership is open to qualified financial institutions, online retailers, ISPs, the law enforcement community, andsolutions providers. There are more than 1600 companies and government agencies participating in the APWG andmore than 2700 members. Note that because phishing attacks and email fraud are sensitive subjects for manyorganizations that do business online, the APWG has a policy of maintaining the confidentiality of member
organizations.
The website of the Anti-Phishing Working Group 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 ofpragmatic technical solutions that can provide immediate protection and benefits against phishing attacks. The
analysis, forensics, and archival of phishing attacks to the website are currently powered by Tumbleweed
Communications' Message Protection Lab.
The APWG, a 501c6 tax-exempted corporation, was founded by Tumbleweed Communications and a number ofmember banks, financial services institutions, and e-commerce providers. It held its first meeting in November 2003 in
San Francisco and in June 2004 was incorporated as an independent corporation controlled by its steering committee,
its board and its executives.

Anti-Phishing Working Group
http://www.antiphishing.org ● info@antiphishing.org