The data in this report is aggregated from a combination of sources including Symantec’s Phish Report Network (PRN), strategic partners, customers and security solutions. This report discusses the metrics and trends observed in phishing activity during the month of December 2009.

Highlighted in the January 2010 report:

Symantec observed a 4 percent decrease from the previous month in all phishing at-

tacks

21 percent of phishing URLs were generated using phishing toolkits; a decrease of 19

percent from the previous month

A 26 percent decrease from the previous month was observed in non-English phishing

sites

More than 118 Web hosting services were used, which accounted for 11 percent of all

phishing attacks; an increase of 2 percent in total Web host URLs when compared to

the previous month

January 2010 Report #27

Phishing Tactic Distribution: Phishing sites were categorized based upon the domains they leveraged. In December, the total volume of phishing decreased by 4 percent from the previous month. Toolkit based phishing attacks faced a decrease of 19 percent, which most likely led to the decrease in the overall volume of phishing. However, phishing attacks based on other methods including typosquatting, IP domains and use of webhosting sites have slightly increased from the previous month.

David Cowings Executive Editor Security Response

Mathew Maniyara Editor Security Response

Sagar Desai PR Contact Sagar_desai@symantec.com

The following categories were analyzed:

Sectors

Number of brands

Phishing toolkits

Fraud URLs with IP addresses

Phish sites that use IP address domains – categorized by hosted cities

Use of Web hosting sites

Geo-locations of phishing sites

Non-English phishing sites

Top-Level domains of phishing sites

Country of brand Non-English phishing sites

Sectors: Phishing target sectors are seen in the graphic below.

Phishing site attack methods and target sectors

Phishing sites in December 2009 were categorized to understand the attack methods and determine the sectors and brands impacted by the attacks.

Number of Brands: Symantec observed that 79 percent of all attacks were from unique phishing websites, which included more than 218 targeted brands. In December 2009, the unique phishing activity increased by 2 percent over the previous month. The proportion of unique phishing URLs increased from 75 percent (in November 2009) to 79 percent (in December 2009). The higher proportion of unique phishing activity was a result of a fall in the number of toolkit phishing websites in the month.

Automated Phishing Toolkits:

Symantec observed that 21 percent of phishing URLs were generated using phishing toolkits. The number of toolkit attacks decreased considerably by 19 percent. A spike was observed in the first week of the month in toolkit phishing activity. However, the volume of phishing attacks from these toolkits was considerably low throughout the

rest of the month. The toolkit attacks on the financial sector decreased considerably in De-cember 2009. The information services sector had the majority of toolkit attacks during the month. The attacks on the financial sector spanned several brands whereas the attacks in information services sector were primarily targeted at a single brand.

Weekly Behavior of Phishing Toolkit Activity

Phishing Attacks Using IP Address Domains

Phishers today use IP addresses as part of the hostname instead of a domain name. This is a tactic employed to hide the actual fake domain name that otherwise can easily be noticed. Also, many banks use IP addresses in their website URLs. A total of 1135 phishing sites were hosted in 61 countries. This amounted to an increase of approximately 8 percent of IP attacks in comparison to the previous month. The United States continued to be the top ranked country hosting phishing sites. The Greater China region con-tinued to be at the second spot comprising of 7 percent of IP attacks. South Korea accounted for approximately 7 percent of IP attacks in the month.

The top cities hosting phish sites were Seoul, Fort Lauderdale and Clarksville. Debuting in December was Clarksville at the third position. Brooklyn, Atlanta and Montreal were common to the list of top cities in the previous month as well.

A total of 118 different web hosting services served as the home for 2,150 phishing sites in the month of December. Symantec observed a 2 percent increase in the number of free web hosting services utilized for developing phishing sites. More than 84 brands were attacked using this method in the reporting period.

1. Geo-Location of Phishing Lures Leading this area are the USA (37 percent), South Korea (5 percent) and Canada (5 per-cent). The proportion of lures from the USA has decreased considerably from (43 percent)

2. Geo-Location of Phishing Web Hosts The top countries are the USA (43 percent), Germany (4 percent) and South Korea (3 per-cent). Symantec observed that the phishing hosts originated from more countries than the

However, this form of attack is not as widely used as it frequently requires manual efforts to prepare the phishing Web page, unlike the automated kit generated websites. Many free web hosts have also improved their preventa-tive and corrective anti-phishing measures significantly decreasing the lifespan of phish-ing sites on their systems.

in the previous month to (37 percent) in the current month. The number of active lures from Canada exceeded that from Germany and has taken over the third position.

previous month. In December, the distribu-tion of web hosts was evenly distributed for all other locations.

Phishing Exploits of Free Web Hosting Services

Global Distribution of Phishing Sites

For phishers, using free web hosting services has been the easiest form of phishing in terms of cost and technical skills required to develop fake sites.

Phishing sites were analyzed based upon the geo-location of their web hosts as well as the number of unique URL’s (referred as “lures” in the report) utilized to lure victims to the phish-

Phishing attacks in Italian, French and Portu-guese languages were the highest in Non-English language attacks. In December 2009, the number of attacks in Portuguese in-creased further, exceeding Chinese and reach-ing the third position. The increase in phishing on a Brazilian social networking website was the reason behind the increase of attacks in Portuguese language. Phishing websites in Italian and French remained higher in financial brands. The attacks in Chinese language pre-vailed in the e-commerce sector.

Non-English Phishing Trends

Top-Level Domains of Phishing Sites

Geo-Location of Phishing Web Hosts

Phishing URLs were categorized based on the Top-Level Domains (TLD). TLDs are the last part of an Internet domain name; i.e., the letters that follow the final dot of any domain name. E.g., in the domain name www.example.com, the Top-Level Domain is .com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive). Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD) are used by a country or a territory. They are two letters long, for example .us is for the United States. Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD) are used by a particular type of organization (.com for a commercial

Comparisons of Top-Level Domains of Phishing Sites

Overall TLDs

The most used TLDs in phishing sites in the month of December were, .com, .net and .org com-prising of (54 percent), (7 percent) and (4 percent) respectively. The Top-Level Domains in phishing were then further categorized:

organization). It is three or more letters long. Most gTLDs are available for use worldwide, but for historical reasons .mil (military) and .gov (government) are restricted to use by the respec-tive U.S. authorities.

1. Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLDs) The generic TLDs .com, .net and .co were the most utilized with (74 percent), (10 percent) and (6 percent) of the total phish attacks respectively.

2. Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLDs) The Russian, Chinese and United Kingdom ccTLDs were evaluated to be the highest in phishing attacks with (11 percent), (8 percent) and (7 percent) respectively.

The top countries of brands attacked in December were the USA, UK and Italy. There were 32 countries whose brands were attacked. As seen in the previous months, the trend of the sec-tors targeted is similar throughout the countries of brand origin except for those belonging to Germany and China. There was a combination of banking, e-commerce and information ser-vices sectors in German brands. In China, the e-commerce sector remains a primary target. UAE made its debut in the top countries of brands attacked. A higher number of phishing attacks on a bank based in UAE led to the country making its debut in the list. Another contributing factor was the disappearance of France and Israel from the list. There were fewer phishing attacks on brands based in these two countries as compared to the previous month.

Country of Targeted Brands The brands that phishing sites spoofed were categorized based on the country in which the brand’s parent company is based.

Phishing Toolkits: Phishing toolkits are auto-mated toolkits that facilitate the creation of phishing Websites. They allow individuals to create and carry out phishing attacks even without any technical knowledge. Unique Phishing Web site: The phishing Web sites that have a unique Web page are classi-fied as “Unique Phishing Websites”. URLs from phishing toolkits that randomize their URL string are observed to point to the same Web page and do not contain a unique Web page in each URL. Unique Phishing Web sites are the ones where each attack is categorized on distinct Web pages. Web-Hosting: Type of Internet hosting ser-vice which allows individuals and organiza-tions to put up their own websites. These websites run on the space of Web host com-pany servers accessible via the World Wide Web. There are different types of Web host-ing services namely, free Web hosting, shared Web hosting, dedicated Web hosting, man-aged Web hosting, etc. of which the free Web hosting service is commonly used to create phishing websites. Typo-Squatting: Typo-squatting refers to the practice of registering domain names that are typo variations of financial institution web-sites or other popular websites.

Phishing Lure: Phishing lures are URLs distrib-uted in spam/phishing email utilized to lure victims to fraudulent phishing websites.

Top-Level Domain (TLD): Sometimes referred to as a Top-Level Domain Name (TLDN): It is the last part of an Internet domain name; that is, the letters that follow the final dot of any domain name. For example, in the domain name www.example.com, the Top-Level Do-main is com (or COM, as domain names are not case-sensitive).

Country Code Top-Level Domains (ccTLD): Used by a country or a dependent territory. It is two letters long, for example .us for the United States.

Generic Top-Level Domains (gTLD): Used by a particular class of organizations (for example, .com for commercial organizations). It is three or more letters long. Most gTLDs are available for use worldwide, but for historical reasons .mil (military) and .gov (governmental) are restricted to use by the respective U.S. Authorities. gTLDs are sub classified into sponsored Top-Level Domains (sTLD), e.g. .aero, .coop and .museum, and un-sponsored Top-Level Domains (uTLD), e.g. .biz, .info, .name and .pro.

Glossary of Terms