Phishing Statistics 2013: New Proofpoint Report on "Longline" Phishing Attacks

In conjunction with our exhibit at the 2013 RSA Security conference, Proofpoint published a new report today that describes a new class of phishing attacks that the company has dubbed "Longline" phishing attacks.

Longlining, which is named after the industrial fishing practice of deploying miles-long fishing lines with thousands of individual hooks, combines successful spear phishing tactics with mass customization. Using these techniques, attackers are now able to rapidly deploy thousands of unique, malware laden messages that are largely undetectable to traditional signature and reputation-based security systems.

Worse, despite their scale, these mass customized phish were effective enough to trick more than 10 percent of recipients into clicking on malicious content capable of taking complete control of PCs and compromising corporate networks.

Proofpoint was able to trace and defeat these attacks for enterprises using Proofpoint Targeted Attack Protection™, the company's recently introduced, big data protection solution. Download our new paper, Longline Phishing: Email-borne Threats, Cloud Computing, Big Data, and the Rise of Industrial Phishing Attacks to learn more about this new class of attacks, including:

• The unique characteristics of longline phishing attacks

• How those characteristics make longlining attacks extremely difficult for traditional email and perimeter security systems to detect and block

• Details about how these attacks are carried out

• Data about the alarming effectiveness of longline phishing attacks

And if you're at the RSA Conference this week, come visit us at booth 739 -- take our annual security survey and we'll give you one of our limited edition t-shirts (as usual, they are pretty cool for vendor swag).