The number of phishing sites reached 37,444 in October, more than 8 times the number of sites in October 2005, the Anti-Phishing Working Group reports.
Phishing sites are designed to steal credit card account and other data through e-mails that use legitimate brand names to trick consumers into revealing their private information. The number of sites has risen fairly steadily over the past year, but began to rise sharply in July, when the number rose 41% to 14,191 from 10,047 in June.
The number of distributed unique software applications designed to steal passwords reached 237 in October, up 54% from 154 in October 2005, the APWG reports. Such malicious software typically gets planted onto personal computers through opened e-mail attachments.
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