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The 2^nd Half/2008 /APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report/ released today reveals that the number of crimeware-spreading sites infecting PCs with password-stealing crimeware reached an all time high of 31,173 websites in December. This represents an 827 percent increase from January of 2008.

Further, the report found, rogue anti-malware programs increased 225 percent from 2,850 in July to 9,287 in December. (Rogue Anti-Malware Programs are fake anti-malware products that can be used for automated phishing, extortion or, most commonly up until recently, the fraudulent sale of a worthless purported anti-malware product.)

APWG Chairman, Dave Jevans said, "While phishing attacks continued against consumers, we saw that cyber criminals really focused new efforts on spreading malicious software, Trojans and crimeware. In particular, criminals are attempting to install software onto consumer’s computers in order to steal their passwords and login credentials to online sites. Consumers must be wary not only of fake emails purporting to be from banks, but also beware of fake security software from unknown vendors and, more than ever, websites programmed to infect their PCs."

Other highlights in the 2^nd Half/2008 /APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report/’s include:

● Unique phishing reports submitted to APWG recorded a yearly high of 34,758 in October

● Unique phishing websites detected by APWG during the second half of 2008 saw a constant increase from July with October having the high for the half at 27,739

● The number of unique keyloggers and crimeware-oriented malicious applications rose to an all-time high in July, reaching 1,519

● The 2^nd Half high of 269 targeted brands in November is just 8.5 percent lower than in May’s all-time high of 294

● The number of phishing attacks against payment services increased more than 34 percent between Q3 and Q4

Addressing the consistently high number of brands being targeted by electronic crime gangs, Blake Hayward, Vice President, Product Marketing, MarkMonitor and contributing analyst to the /Phishing Activity Trends Report/ said, "The continued rise in targeted brands suggests that phishers are scaling their operations to conduct multi-brand attacks."

Websense Chief Technology Officer and APWG Research Fellow/ /Dan Hubbard said that the major uptick of malicious code URLs was mostly due to some large attacks that were using huge amounts of random websites for phishing campaigns that were spoofing classmates’ websites.

Discussing the surge in rogue anti-malware programs, Luis Corrons, Panda Labs’ Technical Director and the newest /APWG Phishing Activity Trends Report /contributing analyst said, “Rogue anti-malware applications are not something new. They have been around for a few years. But it was not until mid-2008 when cybercriminals realized that this form of attack was a great way to obtain fresh money from users.”