Romania Climbs Up To Number 5 In Symantec Phishing URL Chart

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The Symantec report shows that 4% of all phishing URLs active in 2009 are hosted in Romania, down 1% from the previous year.

Nearly 90% of these URLs targeted the financial services industry, the most widely attacked sector in all top ten countries.

The number of Romanian phishing websites has increased 18 times in 2009 from the previous year. In 2009, Romania also edged up from 12 to 20 in a global chart of countries of origin for spam emails. The country's rapidly developing high-speed Internet market has made Romania a preferred hosting country for "malicious activity" perpetrators. Symantec expects this trend to continue in 2010.

Most phishing URLs are hosted in the United States, although the country has seen a drop of over 30% during the past two years, since attackers have been relocating to emerging economies, with rapidly growing broadband networks. South Korea, Spain, Poland and Russia, occupants of the second, third, fourth and fifth positions, respectively, have all registered decreased numbers of phishing URLs in the past year. The remaining top ten positions are held by Great Britain, Germany, Canada and France.

Phishing involves closely replicating the website of a service provider, such as email or banking. Thus, the providers' clients are scammed into providing personal information, which the attackers later use for fraud such as currency theft.