eBay No Longer a Phishing Favorite

A new report has revealed that eBay appears to have fallen out of favor as a phishing target. In April the amount of eBay users subjected to phishing attacks fell by about half and overall the site fell to 4^th place in the top 10 companies used in phishing attacks.

Not surprisingly, Paypal remained king and seems cemented at the number 1 spot. Spots 2 and 3 were claimed by Facebook and financial institution Banco Santander. Habbo, Barclays, HSBC, Worlds of Warcraft, LloydsTSB, Orkut, and several Google services also made the list.

While phishing attacks in general seem to be declining somewhat, spear phishing, which targets specific groups of people, is predicted to rise sharply especially after the recent data breaches that hit Sony and Epsilon. Those incidents resulted in millions of email addresses and other personal info landing in the hands of hackers and it’s likely that they already have been, or will be, sold to other cybercriminals.

Scammers have begun favoring spear attacks because the likelihood of getting victims to fall for them seems to be much higher. The stakes are higher too – instead of just stealing personal info some attacks are now targeting corporate secrets and other private documents.

The report also revealed the first ever documented incidence of “Spam Rage”.  A man in New York grew so enraged at the amount of spam he was receiving that he began tracking down those he believed were responsible and cut their internet cables. He managed to do this to 8 people before he was arrested. In a sterling example of stating the obvious, the police stated he had a mental disorder. It’s not known if the people he vandalized were actually spammers or not.