Phishing attacks on Indian brands rising: Symantec

NEW DELHI: Software security firm Symantec said cyber criminals are targetting Indian brands for phishing attacks to solicit personal information from individuals and to launch money laundering scams.

"Phishing is a growing menace in the Indian cybercrime scenario. With high traffic on the websites of Indian brands, we are seeing that their popularity is being targeted for phishing attacks as well," Symantec India Vice-President (Product Operations) Shantanu Ghosh said.

Phishing is an attempt by a third party to solicit confidential information from an individual, group or organisation by mimicking, or spoofing, a specific well-known brand, usually for financial gain.

Such attacks have seen a rise in recent months with the first two weeks of August witnessing a four-fold increase from 0.05 per cent to two per cent of the overall attacks on Indian brands, he added.

The company has released a list categorising various phishing attacks like Dynamic phishing (where the user clicks on a malicious links) and Flash phishing where the hacker mimics the advertisement of a reputed company and directs the user to a fake phishing website.

Symantec estimates that in the last two years, over a 1,000 unique phishing attacks have been carried out on reputable Indian banks.