Cybercriminals have earned more than $2.3 million by phishing attacks on fraudulent web pages featuring popular crypto-currency wallets and exchanges during the second quarter of 2018, according to a new report from Kaspersky Lab.
The Internet security provider estimates that it detected nearly 60,000 such attempts from April to June 2018.
In addition to traditional phishing, which helps access victim accounts and private key information, cybercriminals try to force their victims to independently transfer crypto-currency to them. One of the tactics is free distribution of the crypto-currency, while another is for scammers to exploit the names of new ICO projects to raise funds from potential investors.
"The permanence of attacks targeting financial organizations reflects the fact that more and more people are using electronic money," said Nadezhda Demidova, lead web content analyst, Kaspersky Lab. "Still, not all of them are sufficiently aware of the possible risks, so intruders are actively trying to steal sensitive information through phishing," she added.
Kaspersky Lab's "Spam and Phishing in Q2 2018" report found that in the second quarter, the company's anti-phishing technologies prevented over 107 million attempts to visit phishing pages. More than one third of attempts were related to financial services, targeting customers via fraudulent banking or payment pages. Mostly, banks, e-shops and payment systems were the targets.
By creating fraudulent pages of banking, payment or shopping sites, intruders harvest sensitive information from unaware victims, including their name, password, email addresses, phone numbers, credit card information and PIN code.
The IT sector was hit the second hardest, with 13.83 percent of attacks targeting technology companies, which is a 12.28 percent increase compared to the previous quarter.
In comparison with Q1, the share of attacks on financial organizations decreased by 8.22 percent.
Brazil suffered the largest phishing attack during the quarter
followed by China, Georgia, Kirghizstan and Russia.
China became the most popular source of spam, overtaking the U.S. and Germany.
Germany continues to be the country most targeted by malicious mail. Russia came second, followed by the United Kingdom, Brazil and Italy.
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