BEDFORD, Mass. — Credit unions drew the attention of 40% of all phishing and pharming attacks on American financial institutions in October, according to RSA Security.
Meanwhile, regional banks were the target of only 17% of such attacks, a record low for the RSA Anti-Fraud Command Center. Nationwide banks accounted for the other 43%, the company says in its November report.
RSA Security says the number of brands attacked remained constant from September, signaling that the same brands were attacked more frequently than before. The United States was the origin of 47% of the attacks, followed by China at 22%, the company says.
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The company also noted the emerging use of Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) to spoof Web site names by using alternate alphabets, such as Cyrillic, where letters correspond to their Latin counterparts.
"Therefore, a spoofed phishing domain which is based on an IDN can look exactly like a genuine bank's domain written in standard code," RSA Security says in its November report. "Once the phishing attack is initiated, however, it is treated and stopped just like any other phishing attack and does not present a greater danger to the user."
RSA Security, a division of EMC, says its command center, a participant in international monitoring efforts, has now shut down more than 42,000 phishing attacks. The company says it currently provides security services to about 200 institutions.
The complete monthly report is at www.rsa.com/phishing_reports.aspx/.
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