Holidays Fuel Surge of Mobile, Online Phishing Scams

‘Tis the season to go phishing. Nothing brings out digital bandits like the holidays, and this year is no exception. Proofpoint, an enterprise digital security company, reported Tuesday its researchers are seeing a massive global increase in holiday-themed mobile phishing attacks, a.k.a. smishing. It noted the volume of mobile phishing messages has almost doubled, compared to this time last year. Those messages are promising everything from package and gift deliveries to special retail offers and special delivery exceptions. “There has been a trend the past few years of scams and smishing related to the holidays and holiday themes in the fourth quarter of the year,” observed Jacinta Tobin, Proofpoint’s global vice president of Cloudmark operations. “We have seen steady growth both from our U.S. and global scam and smishing reports starting in October and increasing through December,” she told TechNewsWorld. Season of Susceptibility Ben Brigida, director of SOC operations at Expel, a SOC-as-a-Service provider inHerndon, Va. explained that phishing attacks increase during the holidays because people are more susceptible to social engineering targeting their desire to show their loved ones they care. “It’s not unusual to get advertisements promising great deals around this time, or to have someone ask if you want to chip in on a large gift,” he told TechNewsWorld. “Attackers can send an email about a deal that’s too good to be true for the hot new toy and people will fall for it,” he said. “They can impersonate a manager,” he continued, “and ask for someone to ‘pick up gift cards for everyone in the office’ and it actually makes sense, so people do it.” Magni R. Sigurdsson, senior manager of detection technologies at Cyren, a cybersecurity company in McLean, Va. that focuses on protecting businesses from phishing attacks and data loss, noted that SMS phishing campaigns have increased because there are more mobile users and devices than there were a year ago. “Phishing is a commercial enterprise, so cybercriminals adapt to changes in consumer behaviors just as legitimate businesses do,” he told TechNewsWorld.