1 in 5 phishing attacks target banks and other financial organizations

High number of attacks highlights need for proper protection to keep users’ money safe from fraudsters

Every fifth phishing attack registered between May 2012 and late April 2013 targeted users of banks and other financial organizations. That figure emerged from research into the evolution of phishing threats carried out by Kaspersky Lab specialists using data from the cloud-based Kaspersky Security Network.

According to Kaspersky Lab, 20.64% of all phishing threats registered between May 2012 and April 2013 were aimed at accounts of banks and other financial organizations worldwide.

The data received from Kaspersky Security Network is indirectly confirmed by the banks: according to the results of a global survey conducted in spring 2013 by B2B International and Kaspersky Lab, about 37% of all banks surveyed were affected by phishing attacks at least once over the previous 12 months.

It’s no surprise that banking and e-commerce has attracted unwanted criminal attention: even a successful attack on search pages, social networks or email can only yield personal data. To turn a profit, cybercriminals must find buyers for this information. However, successfully using fake online banking or shopping pages leads directly to earnings for the scammers.

But despite the widespread dangers of phishing attacks, simply installing a security product with the necessary functionality to protect financial operations will protect even the most inexperienced users when conducting transactions online.

Safe Money technology – safe online banking and shopping

Kaspersky Lab’s products for home users – Kaspersky Internet Security and Kaspersky PURE – protect online financial operations by implementing our Safe Money technology. A key feature of the technology is that it was developed based on analysis of the techniques used by fraudsters to attack users of online banking services and online stores.

Among its arsenal of protection technologies, Safe Money includes advanced anti-phishing features: for example, the technology prevents the execution of any potentially dangerous code in the browser, thus protecting the user against XSS attacks and attempts to automatically download malware from an infected site. Additionally, the technology checks that users are entering legitimate sites, thanks to its constantly updated database of trusted websites and phishing URLs. At the same time, the heuristic mechanisms integrated in the Kaspersky Lab products can effectively detect malicious links even if they are not included in the database.

Safe Money technology was first introduced in 2012 as part of Kaspersky Internet Security 2013. Since then its advantages have been appreciated by millions of users worldwide.