RSA, The Security Division of EMC, today released highlights from its online fraud report for March 2008. The RSA Anti-Fraud Command Centre (AFCC) reported a record high in the number of global phishing attacks. This was influenced by the spread of phishing to additional geographic regions and new verticals. March was also the first time that both Australia and New Zealand have appeared in the regional breakdown of attacked global banking brands.

In addition, Rock Phish spam emails were of overt prevalence in March. The notorious Rock Phish gang is a group of cyber criminals responsible for an estimated 50 percent of the world’s phishing attacks. The Rock Phish gang creates and sends spam emails using specific features in combination that enable them to both avoid detection and increase the volume of hits to their website to levels beyond those of other phishing sites. The gang uses ‘hash busters’, which add random text to each email message in order to create a unique message, making it difficult for anti-spam filters to qualify. They also deploy a Botnet of personal computers.

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RSA, The Security Division of EMC, is the premier provider of security solutions for business acceleration, helping the world's leading organisations succeed by solving their most complex and sensitive security challenges. RSA's information-centric approach to security guards the integrity and confidentiality of information throughout its lifecycle - no matter where it moves, who accesses it or how it is used.

RSA offers industry-leading solutions in identity assurance & access control, encryption & key management, compliance & security information management and fraud protection. These solutions bring trust to millions of user identities, the transactions that they perform, and the data that is generated. For more information, please visit www.RSA.com and www.EMC.com.

Media Contact

Geoff Noble

Banking and Finance Specialist

RSA, The Security Division of EMC

gnoble@rsa.com

+61 2 9463 8400