Aug 20, 2010 10:16 GMT  ·  By

Security researchers from German antivirus vendor Avira warn that the number of phishing attacks targeting Facebook users has increased by almost 64% in July, pushing the website in second place on the list of most phished brands.

According to statistics compiled by Avira, even though phishing activity targeting PayPal has registered as significant drop of 37.30% compared to June, the e-commerce website remains the most phished brand on the Internet by far, being the target of 65.45% such attacks.

The popular World of Warcraft game also registered a significant rise of 40.58% in attacks against it and takes the third spot after Facebook with a 4.04% score.

Another notable change was observed in the case of HSBC Bank, with associated phishing activity decreasing by 36.42% in July.

Nevertheless, the financial institution is still the target of 3.16% of phishing attacks, which puts it in the fifth place, after eBay with 3.65%.

The rest of the top is filled in by Tibia Guilds 1.58%, Craiglist (1.11%), Halifax (0.94%) and Bank of America (0.90%).

It's worth noting that Tibia Guilds, a free multiplayer online role playing game (MMORPG) produced by a German company called CipSoft GmbH, is a newcomer to the list and has replaced the IRS.

Stolen online gaming credentials are a valuable source of income for cybercriminals. Depending on how well the game character is developed, World of Warcraft (WoW) accounts are valued at between $35 and $28,000 on the black market.

In comparison, Tibia Guilds is not that well known and its presence on the top ten list might be caused by Avira's extensive insight into the German cyber threat landscape.

Meanwhile, the increased interest shown by phishers towards Facebook accounts, surely puts into perspective the sensitive info leak bugs found recently on the social network's login page.

"Because of the holiday season, many people started to buy games and spend more time in the social media websites, so the increase in attacking such web sites comes quite naturally," Sorin Mustaca, manager of international software development at Avira, noted.