Phishing attacks reached a record high during the second quarter of 2009, with 151,000 unique attacks, according to a study by brand reputation firm MarkMonitor.

Brands in the financial and payment services sectors continue to be the favourite targets for fraudulent emails that attempt to trick users into handing over their login credentials. They were the subject of four in five (80 per cent) of all phish attacks in Q2 2009. Elsewhere, attacks targeting the login credentials of social networking websites more than doubled between Q2 2008 and Q2 2009, increasing 168 per cent over the course of 12 months.

An analysis of the millions of URLs in fraudulent emails by MarkMonitor identified a shift in the phishing techniques used by fraudsters, with 351 attacks per organisation, on average, in Q2 2009. The US hosted half (50 per cent) of the sites associated with phishing attacks during Q2 2009.

MarkMonitor reckons phishing attacks are at a two-year high, contrary to some reports that suggest fraudulent email attacks are on the decline. ®

Related stories

• Hotmail 'phishing' campaign is small peanuts (8 October 2009)
• Hotmail phish exposes most common passwords (7 October 2009)
• Update Gmail, AOL, Yahoo! all hit by webmail phishing scam (6 October 2009)
• Banking Trojans double as scareware runs wild (2 October 2009)
• Study finds med students Tweeting patient info (29 September 2009)
• Phishing worm spreads across Twitter (24 September 2009)
• Fraudsters add IM to phishing attacks (17 September 2009)
• iPhone anti-phishing protection goes AWOL (10 September 2009)
• Guns, drugs, stolen identities - portrait of a phisher (10 September 2009)
• Phishing emails dry up as fraudsters switch tactic (27 August 2009)
• UK banks 'not doing enough' on internet fraud (27 August 2009)
• Security bugs crawl all over financial giant’s website (20 August 2009)
• Facebook phishers cast multiple lines (17 August 2009)