Identifying trends among phishing attacks

Matthew R Riedle, Purdue University

Abstract

The nature of phishing scams seems to vary in degree of complexity. These scams have generally been considered a basic form of fraud due to the ability to simply send out a massive amount of emails. However, as email servers have become more sophisticated, limits have been imposed on the number of emails that can be sent out before being categorized as spam. Also, as user awareness has increased, the amount of effort and customization put into phishing emails has had to equally increase in order to continually fool the victim. These characteristics of change in phishing techniques and tactics cannot only provide insight into the minds of both fraudsters and their victims, but also provide insight in assisting businesses that shutdown such forms of fraud attacks. Throughout this research, the history of phishing attacks was analyzed to determine any existing patterns. This paper attempted to identify trends in the types of phishing attacks to draw out which attack types are more popular within the fraud landscape, and determine if certain attack types are becoming more or less prevalent. The data collected for the research yielded several trends that were able to support the research question. Trends were identified indicating several months where the amount of phishing attacks were more prevalent. The trends also indicated a rise in the amount of attacks over the past 10 years.

Degree

M.S.

Advisors

Rogers, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Computer science

COinS