Cybercrime syndicates are expanding the base of brands they exploit for online fraud beyond major financial institutions and online merchants, according to a new report from the Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG).
The number of hijacked brands reached a record 356 in October, up nearly 4.4 percent from the previous record of 341 in August 2009.
"No brand is safe from the threat of spoofing for the purposes of online fraud. Once, only the largest banks were targeted," said Peter Cassidy, APWG Secretary General.
"Now, every kind of enterprise from banks and credit unions of all sizes to charities to, in a recent case, a hardware manufacturer, are now seeing their brands exploited in all manner of fraud scheme."
While the number of unique phishing reports submitted to the APWG in Q4 declined nearly 29 percent from a record high of 40,621 in August, dropping to 28,897 reports in December, the stats don't reflect a more troubling trend. Member reports to APWG and research reviews in Q3 and Q4, reveal a significant increase in phishing focused on high value targets such as people in charge of finances.
"Spear-phishing and whale-phishing, where targeted individuals inside of corporations, or of high net worth, appears to be increasing," said Dave Jevans, APWG Chairman.
"Phishers and malware attackers are sending emails to individuals in a highly targeted fashion, attempting to gain access to corporate online banking systems, corporate VPN networks, and other online resources."
"These attacks do not contribute significantly to the overall number of unique phishing emails that are/> [...]
Adobe will soon introduce its Creative Suite 5 to the public. A tool in the new suite will allow for easy import of Flash animations into HTML5 Canvas code. Once IE9 launches, all major browsers will support Canvas. At that point, any Flash creation can be viewable by just about anyone without downloading the Flash plugin. It also means, clearly, that devices that cannot accept the plugin can nonetheless run the animations built on it.
Those who are excited about this probably think of Flash is a space hog. As ReadWriteWeb has discovered, it sometimes is, though not always.
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One of the points of interest regarding this development is the fact that Apple products block flash from "access to the required APIs." HTML5 may prove a way around for Flash users and the users of Apple devices, like the iPhone and iPad who wish to use the content.
On the video below, "Adobe Flash Platform Evangelist" Michael Chaize compares performance of Flash 10.1 and HTML5 on mobile devices.
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Adobe will soon introduce its Creative Suite 5 to the public. A tool in the new suite will allow for easy import of Flash animations into HTML5 Canvas code. Once IE9 launches, all major browsers will support Canvas. At that point, any Flash creation can be viewable by just about anyone without downloading the Flash plugin. It also means, clearly, that devices that cannot accept the plugin can nonetheless run the animations built on it. 
