Phishing


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Not to be confused with Fishing or Pishing.

An example of a phishing email, disguised as an official email from a (fictional) bank. The sender is attempting to trick the recipient into revealing confidential information by "confirming" it at the phisher's website. Note the misspelling of the words received and discrepancy as recievedand discrepency, respectively. Although the URL of the bank's webpage appears to be legitimate, the hyperlink points at the phisher's webpage.

Phishing is the fraudulent attempt to obtain sensitive information or data, such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by disguising oneself as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Typically carried out by email spoofing, instant messaging, and text messaging, phishing often directs users to enter personal information at a fake website which matches the look and feel of the legitimate site.

Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to deceive users. Users are lured by 




communications purporting to be from trusted parties such as social web sites, auction sites, banks,


colleagues/executives, online payment processors or IT administrators.

Attempts to deal with phishing incidents include legislation, user training, public awareness, and technical security measures (the latter being due to phishing attacks frequently exploiting weaknesses in current web security).

The word is a neologism created as a homophone of fishing.


Unique phishing reports by year [87]
Year Campaigns
2005
173,063
2006
268,126
2007
327,814
2008
335,965
2009
412,392
2010
313,517
2011
284,445
2012
320,081
2013
491,399
2014
704,178
2015
1,413,978
Total number of unique phishing reports (campaigns) received, according to APWG[87]
Year Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec Total
2005 12,845 13,468 12,883 14,411 14,987 15,050 14,135 13,776 13,562 15,820 16,882 15,244 173,063
2006 17,877 17,163 18,480 17,490 20,109 28,571 23,670 26,150 22,136 26,877 25,816 23,787 268,126
2007 29,930 23,610 24,853 23,656 23,415 28,888 23,917 25,624 38,514 31,650 28,074 25,683 327,814
2008 29,284 30,716 25,630 24,924 23,762 28,151 24,007 33,928 33,261 34,758 24,357 23,187 335,965
2009 34,588 31,298 30,125 35,287 37,165 35,918 34,683 40,621 40,066 33,254 30,490 28,897 412,392
2010 29,499 26,909 30,577 24,664 26,781 33,617 26,353 25,273 22,188 23,619 23,017 21,020 313,517
2011 23,535 25,018 26,402 20,908 22,195 22,273 24,129 23,327 18,388 19,606 25,685 32,979 284,445
2012 25,444 30,237 29,762 25,850 33,464 24,811 30,955 21,751 21,684 23,365 24,563 28,195 320,081
2013 28,850 25,385 19,892 20,086 18,297 38,100 61,453 61,792 56,767 55,241 53,047 52,489 491,399
2014 53,984 56,883 60,925 57,733 60,809 53,259 55,282 54,390 53,661 68,270 66,217 62,765 704,178
2015 49,608 55,795 115,808 142,099 149,616 125,757 142,155 146,439 106,421 194,499 105,233 80,548 1,413,978
2016 99,384 229,315 229,265 121,028 96,490 98,006 93,160 66,166 69,925 51,153 64,324 95,555 1,313,771
2017 96,148 100,932 121,860 87,453 93,285 92,657 99,024 99,172 98,012 61,322 86,547 85,744 1,122,156
2018 89,250 89,010 84,444 91,054 82,547 90,882 93,078 89,323 88,156 87,619 64,905 87,386 1,040,654
2019 34,630 35,364 42,399 37,054 40,177 34,932 35,530 40,457 42,273 45,057 42,424 45,072 475,369

"APWG Phishing Attack Trends Reports". Retrieved May 5, 2019.