December 2021 shows highest number of Phishing attacks

In 2004, the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) was formed to find and report on cybersecurity attacks per quarter. In its latest report, it discovered that December 2021 saw the largest number of phishing attacks in the past two years. The report showed that it actually tripled compared to early 2020.

The number of phishing attacks reported for December 2021 is 316,747. The most significant victims were banks and other institutes in the financial sector, which amounted to just over 23% of the total attacks for that quarter. Even cryptocurrency saw some damage with numbers at 6.5%.

For better context, you should note that September and October 2021 only saw 715 and 682 brands affected by the phishing attacks. It rose to an alarming 4,200 businesses and organizations in December 2021. It also appears as if the cyber-criminals are focusing on specific industries. 

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If you’ve been paying attention to our articles this year, you’ll know how much malware has been on the rise. In the past two months, we’ve had to deal with Purple Fox hiding in Telegram, Chrome revealing security issues, and MoonBounce surviving OS reinstallations. We even went as far as showing you how to be safe online.

With Windows 11 being a brand new operating system, we urge all of you to be as careful as possible. It appears as if factory resets still retain data in Windows 11, and we don’t know as yet just how vulnerable that makes the system. Don’t click on suspicious emails and links.