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1 Quarter
st
2010
Phishing Defined
APWG continues to refine and develop its tracking and reporting methodology and to incorporate new data sources
into our reports. APWG has re-instated the tracking 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 month with 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 the
phishing sites. APWG additionally tracks crimeware instances (unique software applications as determined by
MD5 hash of the crimeware sample) as well as unique sites that are distributing crimeware (typically via browser
drive-by exploits). The APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report‘s also includes statistics on rogue anti-virus software,
desktop infection rates and relative rates of abuse in phishing attacks defined by the top-level domain used in
phishing campaigns. With this edition, APWG includes statistics on phishing attacks’ abuse of Top Level Domains.
Number of unique phishing email reports received by APWG from 29,499 26,909 30,577
consumers
Phishing Email Reports and Phishing Site Trends – 1st Quarter 2010
The following chart combines statistics based on brands phished, unique domains, unique domain/brand pairs, and
unique 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. The number of unique brand-domain pairs dropped during the Q1 2010. The 16,922
brand-domain pairs in January was followed by March with just 10,752, down some 56 percent from the record of
24,438 recorded in August, 2009.
Forensic utility of this metric: 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 each domain indicates the approximate number of attacking domains a brand-holding victim needs to
locate and neutralize. Since Phishing-prevention technologies (like browser and email blocking) require the full
URL, it is useful to understand the general number of unique URLs that occur per domain.
Most Used Ports Hosting Phishing Data Collection Servers – 1st Quarter 2010
The first quarter of 2010 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 in 2003.
Brands and Legitimate Entities Hijacked by Email Phishing Attacks – 1st Quarter 2010
The first quarter of 2010 saw a high of 298 in March for the three month period, a decrease of 16 percent from the all-
time high of 356 reached in October, 2009. As the numbers of brands has dropped, phishers still continue to expand
their targets in other ways, such as focusing on executives and line employees with corporate treasury authority.
Payment Services returned to being the most targeted industry sector after Financial Services held top position
during H2 2009. However, the category of ‚Other‛ rose from 13 percent to nearly 18 percent from Q4 2009 to Q1
2010, an increase of nearly 38 percent. Ihab Shraim, MarkMonitor’s chief security officer and vice president,
network and system engineering, and Trends Report contributing analyst said, "The increase in the ‘Other’ category is
attributed to the sharp increase in attacks against the online classifieds, social networking and gaming industries."
The United States continued its position as the top country hosting phishing sites during the first quarter of 2010
with China maintaining a top three listing during the three month period.
The APWG’s Crimeware statistics categorize 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 to
steal 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.
Over the quarter, the proportion of crimeware-specific malware (malicious code designed specifically to infect financial
institutions’ customers’ PCs) remained consistent, while generic data-stealing malware grew month-to-month. Patrik
Runald, Senior Manager, Security Research for Websense and a Trends Report contributing analyst said, "Malware that
steals information from users’ computers are continuing to
be a major problem as it happens in the background, without
the users’ knowledge. Without proper security protection in
place, the user is totally unaware this is going on and the bad
guys continue to profit because of it.ʺ
This chart represents a breakdown of the websites which were classified during the first quarter 2010 as hosting
malicious code in the form of either a phishing-based keylogger or a Trojan downloader which downloads a
keylogger. This quarter, and for the first time recorded by the APWG, the top four countries remained in ranked
order throughout the entire three month period, consistently lead by the USA.
Scanning and Sampling Methodology: Panda Labs gathers data from millions of computers worldwide through its
scanning service to give a statistically valid view of the security situation at the desktop. The scanned computers
belong to both corporate and consumer users in more than 100 countries. Though the scanning system checks for
many different kinds of potentially unwanted software, for this report, Panda Labs has segmented out
‘Downloaders’ and ‘Banking Trojans/Password Stealers’ as they are most often associated with financial crimes such
as automated phishing schemes.
While the relative proportions of crimeware genera remained static during the surveyed term, the proportion of
infected computers increased substantially from Q4 2009 to Q1 2010, growing from 10,305,805 in Q4 2009 to
11,384,640 in Q1 2010, rising from 47 percent to more than 53 percent in Q1 2010. This shift was an increase of more
than 10 percent quarter over quarter.
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The full report this data was drawn from can be found here:
http://www.antiphishing.org/reports/APWG_GlobalPhishingSurvey_2H2009.pdf
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The APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report is published by the APWG, an industry, government and law
enforcement association focused on eliminating the identity theft and frauds that result from the growing
problem of phishing, crimeware, and email spoofing. For further information about the APWG, please contact
APWG Deputy Secretary General Foy Shiver at 404.434.7282 or fshiver@antiphishing.org. For media inquiries
related to the content of this report please contact APWG Secretary General Peter Cassidy at 617.669.1123; Te
Smith of MarkMonitor at 831.818.1267 or Te.Smith@markmonitor.com; Luis Corrons of Panda at
lcorrons@pandasoftware.es; Heather Read of Afilias at hread@afilias.info or 215.706.5777; for Websense, contact
publicrelations@websense.coml; and for Internet Identity contact pr@internetidentity.com or 253.590.4100
The APWG, founded as the Anti-Phishing Working Group in 2003, is an industry association focused on eliminating the
identity theft and fraud that result from the growing problem of phishing and email spoofing. Membership is open to
qualified financial institutions, online retailers, ISPs, the law enforcement community, and solutions providers. There are
more than 1,800 companies and government agencies worldwide participating in the APWG and more than 3,500
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 resource for information about the problem of
phishing and electronic frauds perpetrated against personal computers and their users. The APWG, a 501c6 tax-exempted
corporation, was founded by Tumbleweed Communications, financial services institutions and e-commerce providers.
APWG’s first meeting was in November 2003 in San Francisco and in June 2004 was incorporated as an independent
corporation controlled by its steering committee, its board of directors, and its executives.
Report data consolidation and editing completed by Ronnie Manning, Mynt Public Relations, since 2005.
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