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According to the latest Anti-Phishing Working Group report, there were 17,877 unique phishing reports submitted in January - the biggest number ever recorded. The figure itself is 50 per cent higher than the previous year and the number of phishing reports rose steadily throughout 2005.

Even more concerning is the number of phishing sites which are appearing on the Internet. The APWG recorded 9715 sites in January, up from just 4630 in November. On the other hand, the group says that fewer brands

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were being spoofed in January following the record number in November. This might indicate that the criminal gangs behind the phishing activities are concentrating their efforts on a few brands and their customers, who they consider might be particularly susceptible to this kind of fraud.

January also saw phishing-based Trojans reached an all time high in with 184 unique applications detected and recorded. Of particular concern were the keyloggers which monitor keyboard traffic and transmit it to a remote server, and redirectors which, as the name suggests, redirect a request for a legitimate site to a spoofed one.

Not surprisingly, the most spoofed sites were still overwhelmingly in the financial sector, with 92 per cent of recorded phishing attempts targeting banks and other financial institutions. The United States remains by far the biggest phisher with 36.6 per cent of the total, with China and Korea way behind in second and third place with 9 per cent and 7.7 per cent respectively. The UK is way down the list with just 2.1 per cent of the phishing web sites.