The number of phishing attacks doubled in the last year

E-mail is no longer the most common mechanism; 88% of the cases comes from links via browser or messaging systems.

The phishing attacks have increased 87% over the past 12 months, moving from the 19.9 million to 37.3 million.

They are striking data which presented the report the evolution of attacks phighing from 2011 to 2013 prepared by Kasperksy Russian security firm. This technique, formerly considered to be a subset of spam is now an own ciberamenaza. "Phishing is not only a tool [...] for the illicit enrichment of cybercriminals, but it represents a significant and visible threat,"says Nikita Shvetsov, the Director of research of Kaspersky in a statement.

30% Of all reported incidents have been through Yahoo!, Google, Facebook and Amazon. Most were conducted in Russia, USA, India, Viet Nam and the UK.

The technique lies in the creation of a false copy of a popular site. Cybercriminals gather the information of the users, who used to send email spam, sell stolen passwords or databases to steal money, if that is duplicated is a banking site. American Express, PayPal, Xbox Live and Twitter are among the 30 most attacked sites.

The report warns that the email is not the most common mechanism to carry out these attacks; the 88% of cases comes from links via browser or messaging systems like Skype.