US harbours one-in-four phishing sites

A community project to identify and take down phishing sites has produced its first set of statistics.

Submissions to Phishtank, a service run by OpenDNS, reveal that PayPal and eBay were the most targeted organizations in phishing attacks in October. UK bank Barclays ranks third in the list.

Phishing sites are hosted all around the world but the US (with 24 per cent of recorded phishing domains) and South Korea (14 per cent) are the biggest single contributors to the problem. Only one in 25 (four per cent of phishing domains) are hosted in the UK.

Phishtank also lists the telcos hosting verified phishing websites: Hanaro Telecom (469 phishing sites), National Internet Backbone (333) and TELESC Telecomunicacoes de Santa Catarina SA, Brazil (224) top this list.

A detailed summary of Phishtank's findings can be found here. ®