According to data collected as part of Kaspersky Lab's "Financial Cyber Threats in 2013" study, cybercriminals are trying harder than ever to acquire confidential user information and steal money from bank accounts by creating fake sites mimicking financial organizations.

In 2013, 31.45% cent of phishing attacks were trading on the names of leading banks, online stores and online payment systems. That's an increase of 8.5 percentage points from the previous year.

Phishing is a fraudulent scheme used by cybercriminals to obtain confidential user data with the help of fake web pages imitating Internet resources. Unlike malicious software created for particular operating systems, phishing attacks threaten all devices which can access web pages. That is why they are so popular with scammers. In 2013 alone Kaspersky Lab (www.kaspersky.co.uk) says its products protected about 39.6 million users from this cyber threat.

Phishing sites aimed at harvesting users' financial details mainly use the brand names of popular online stores, online payment systems and online banking systems. In 2013, the most attractive targets were banks, which were used in 70.6% of all financial phishing. That's a sharp increase from 2012 when bank phishing represented just 52%. Overall, fake bank websites were involved in twice as many (22.2%) phishing attacks in 2013.