The April report of the Anti-Phishing Working Group shows that phishers have started to launch more and more sophisticated attacks and to focus especially on small and medium financial institutions, which have weaker defensive systems compared to banks.

Although the attacks based on IP have decreased in intensity, overall, the phishing attacks have continued their upward trend, in April, 14,441 attacks being recorded.

APWG, which collaborated with WebSense to carry out the report, draws attention on the fact that phishing schemes are now more sophisticated, especially since phishers have started to work together and launch simultaneous attacks on a single target.

Financial service providing companies are still the main target of phishing attacks, followed closely by ISPs.

One of the trends noticed by APWG is the increase of the number of phishing sites from China which is now close to the one from USA. In April, Chinese active phishing sites represented 22% of the total number of phishing sites compared to the 26% identified in the USA.

The full report can be found here http://antiphishing.org/APWG_Phishing_Activity_Report_April_2005.pdf