Phishing Attacks in and Around April Through September 2006

Overview

This paper describes phishing trends from April 2006 through September 2006 inclusive. The aim is to perform the kind of careful analysis done in the Symantec Internet Security Threat Report, but with a focus on phishing. The authors looked at data that originated from both the Symantec Brightmail AntiSpam and Norton Confidential systems. They were specifically interested in the overall magnitude of phishing, the geographic breakdowns of phishing servers, and the segmentation of brands spoofed in a phishing attack. This paper details the statistics computed, the methodology used to derive these statistics and the limitations of the methodology.