Rejoice, Blighty! UK is the TOP of the WHOLE WORLD ... for PHISHING

British punters are being served three times as many phishing links to trojans and exploit kits than the US, and five times more than the Germans, according to a ProofPoint study.

The security researchers say that while the English were being served more malicious links, Germans were hit with the greatest amount of unsolicited spam.

The scams aimed to lift British wallets through banking trojans and phishing emails mimicking organisations like the Royal Bank of Scotland.

"The malicious emails can deliver payloads ranging from credential phish to banking trojans, and can depend on exploit kits or end-user interaction – such as clicking a link to download a file and a malicious attachment – in order to execute," company researchers wrote in a blog.

"On average an unsolicited email sitting in the inbox of a user in the UK is more than five times more likely to contain a malicious URL than for a user in Germany," the firm added.

The study found the Dyre trojan was being slung at British users through the Upatre downloader after it was identified by the company targeting US banks in the wake of the Gameover Zeus takedown.

That remote access trojan was found on 3 September to be targeting Salesforce users and not only large financial institutions. It sought out data sent from web browsers, including even SSL-encrypted information, which was siphoned off to criminals. ®