Cyveillance’s Online Financial Fraud and Identity Theft Report discovers a rise in Malware distribution and phishing attacks, and finds 63 percent of Malware distributed by US websites

Aug. 20, 2007 - (TopHosts News Brief) – Cyber Intelligence provider Cyveillance announced their latest “Online Financial Fraud and Identity Theft Report.”

The new study reports that U.S. based Web surfers are the most at risk for malware attacks and online identity theft schemes. The report recorded more than 63 percent of malware distributed on U.S.-based websites. Also, more than 2 million URLs world-wide distributed malicious downloads to site visitors.

Cyveillance’s report also found that, although the rate of traditional phishing attacks is leveling off, there was a 20% rise in the aggregate quantity of brands targeted. This indicates that phishers continue to change targets. Since 2005 over 1,400 companies have been attacked.

Through Cyveillance’s comprehensive Internet monitoring, they found that, out of the 284 brands targeted by phishing attacks for the first time during the second calendar quarter of 2007, more than 80 percent were U.S.-based financial institutions. These figures draw a distinct parallel to the total number of compromised credit cards found online, of which more than 80 percent were supplied by US issuers.

Malware over the Web has grown into a specialized “fraud chain” made up of malware hosting sites, distribution sites and drop sites. China and the United States together host 60 percent of sites where malware binaries are stored. 63% of the sites utilized to attract and distribute malware are hosted in the United States. Also, the United States hosts over 50 percent of the world’s malware drop sites, which collect information from infected computers that use keyloggers, screen scrapers and other approaches to passively harvest sensitive personal information.

For more information about Cyveillance’s research findings, please visit http://www.cyveillance.com/fraudreport-Q207.