Microsoft: Phishing is going out of fashion

Organised criminals are losing interest in harvesting consumer banking details, according to Microsoft UK chief security adviser Ed Gibson.

Speaking to ZDNet UK this week, Gibson said that powerful cybercriminals would not waste time trying to harvest individual banking details, but instead concentrate on acquiring networks of compromised PCs ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù botnets ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù to launch attacks against companies.

“Organised criminals are not really interested in bank details ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù criminals want bandwidth to attack companies,” said Gibson. “Who’s grabbing the details is changing.”

The practice of phishing for bank details, in which fake emails claim to come from a legitimate financial institution and try to elicit account details, is traditionally associated with highly organised criminal networks. Gibson, though, claims it is moving further down the criminal food chain and being perpetrated by malicious individuals.

Read more: ZDNet UK