The world financial crisis has lead to a lot of changes, corporations buy out one another, merging and also all sorts of structural changes are happening for the finanical companies to stay afloat. These changes are having impact on some of the online attacks as well. As reported by multiple sources, the phishers are currently leveraging the opportunity to craft persuasive phish email such as this and this. We are sure to see more of these phishing Emails.

For the long term, the consolidations in the financial sector especially in the US will make phishing easier. The bigger the banks in a country, the easier the phishing operation. As big banks merge together to form mega-banks, it helps the phishers to reach the right group of clients. For example, in the past, every 100 people who received the phish Email, only 5 are customers of a specific bank. After the consolidation, 12 are customers of that bank. This type of situation had been seen in UK and Australia in the past due to the smaller number of banks in these countries. As banks start to consolidates everywhere in the world, this might happen in the US as well.

Jason Lam