India among top 4 countries targeted for phishing attacks: Report
The threat of phishing scams, where a fake app/website is used to fool users into entering their social or financial credentials is much higher than we ever imagined. RSA Security, a unit of Dell Technologies, has highlighted the risk of phishing for India, ranking the country among the top four nations targeted by the online fraudsters. Here's more on its report.
India, US among top targets, says report
Alongside India, US, Canada, and the Netherlands have also been ranked as the top targets of phishing attacks, according to RSA's 'Quarterly Fraud Report'. In the third quarter of 2018, as many as 38,196 online frauds were detected across the globe. Of this, phishing attacks solely accounted for nearly 50% of the cases, marking a whopping 70% increase over the second quarter.
India also among top countries hosting these attacks
More interestingly, the same fraud report revealed that India and US are also among the top countries hosting phishing attacks. This basically indicates people are targeting their own country among others.
What are the risks posed by phishing attacks?
As websites and apps forging as phishing attacks look fairly legit, users don't even realize the threat until it's too late. They just go ahead and enter credentials to their banking, social accounts and basically hand over their details to an attacker. As soon as the details are entered, they go to the attackers' server, giving them immediate access.
Here's what RSA Security said about phishing
"Phishing attacks not only enable online financial fraud but these sneaky threats chip away at our sense of security as they get better at mimicking legitimate links, messages, accounts, individuals and sites," the RSA report said.
What else the online fraud report found?
Apart from phishing, the report also looked at financial malware-based frauds, which accounted for nearly 12% of the attacks - 4% less than Q2. The firm also detected nearly 10,000 rogue mobile apps, which accounted for 24% of the fraud cases. Notably, browsers and mobile apps were the sources of as many as 73% of the total attacks.
