Phishing still on the increase

The growing threat of phishing attacks, which tempt unwary individuals into revealing personal information to scammers posing as legitimate firms, can be beaten by a combination of education and technology.

According to a new White Paper, Anti-Phishing: Best Practices for Institutions and Consumers, education of users and automatic blocks on the sending of sensitive information are key.

"We've seen staggering growth in phishing over the last few months," said Robin Matlock, vice president of product marketing for McAfee, the security firm which commissioned the research.

"There has been some success with user education, but anti-spam technology and better content filtering are also needed. Hackers go for the lowest hanging fruit so take some precautions and you'll be a lot safer."

McAfee's research found that the increasing sophistication of phoney web pages and better social engineering in initial emails has improved the success rate of attacks. It estimates that between one and 20 per cent of scams actually succeed.

A series of phishing scams has forced UK banks to warn their customers about the threat.

"Many banks are looking at whether they need to roll out strong authentication to all users in the light of phishing attacks," said Chris Potter, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers.

"But the cost and complexity of such systems has always been the barrier to this. If anyone can provide a simple and effective form of authentication the internet banking community would pick it up."

According to figures released by the Anti-Phishing Working Group phishing attacks in 2004 are rising by 52 per cent per month, amounting to 5.7 attacks a day. Finance, retail and ISP customers are primary targets.