Phishing activity spiked in the initial months of 2020, taking advantage of paucity of pandemic-related products and increased streaming service use
The 2021 Webroot BrightCloud Threat Report was released today by OpenText. Webroot’s unrivalled sixth-generation machine learning security framework offers unprecedented data insights into threat actors’ timing, strategies, and innovations over the past year.
Phishing activity spiked in the initial months of 2020, taking advantage of paucity of pandemic-related products and increased streaming service use. For the first time, eBay topped the list of brands most targeted for impersonation, accounting for 31.1 percent of all phishing attacks in February. In March, phishing activity increased dramatically on YouTube (3,064 percent), Netflix (525 percent), and Twitch.tv (337 percent).
Commenting on the development, Prentiss Donohue, Executive Vice President, SMB/C Sales, OpenText, said “Gathered from over 285 million real-world endpoints and sensors, and leveraging the extensive BrightCloud network of industry-leading partners, this year’s Threat Report clearly shows how cybercriminals are willing and able to evolve their tactics to exploit collective human interest and current events,”
He added “The findings underscore the need for users and businesses of all sizes to enact a multi-layered approach to data security and protection given the persistent creativity of cybercriminals.”
Report Observations
• From January to February, the number of cyber attacks increased by 510 percent
• Ebay, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, and Google were the top five phishing targets of the year
• HTTPS was used by 54 percent of phishing sites by the end of 2020. HTTPS use differs greatly depending on the industry targeted, but it is most commonly used when spoofing cryptocurrency exchanges (70 percent of the time), ISPs (65 percent), and gaming sites (62 percent)
Malware
• Only 86.1 percent of malware is specific to a single computer.
• One of four locations is where 83 percent of Windows malware hides. The infection rate for one of them, appdata, increased by 59.2 percent year over year.
• When compared to business devices, consumer devices had twice as many malware infections.
Rates of Infection by Country & Industry
• Japan had the lowest PC infection rate per region (2.3 percent), followed by the United Kingdom (2.7 percent), Australasia (3.2 percent), and North America (3.7 percent)
• In Europe, home devices were more than three times as likely as business devices to become infected (17.4 percent versus 5.3 percent)
Mobile & Android
• Trojans and malware accounted for 95.9 percent of overall threats found on Android devices in 2020, up from 92.2 percent in 2019
• Older versions mobile operating systems accounted for nearly 90% of Android infections.