The surge is almost certainly linked to the economic crisis, as mergers between major financial institutions lead to consumer confusion and provide a topical target for phishers, MarkMonitor's Te Smith told
Managing IP: "Phishers take advantage of market movement. They're always trying something new, and when they find something that works, they'll do it over and over."
For example, Lehman Brothers was phished for the first time the Monday after it filed for bankruptcy. As rumours of potential buyers circulated, sites including barclayslehman.com, hsbclehman.com, hsbclehmanbrothers.com and bofalehman.com were quickly acquired.
Cybersquatting also continued to rise, with an 18% increase in 2008. So-called blended abuse, which combines cybersquatting with abuses such as false association and offensive content, also became more popular in 2008.
"That 80% of abuse sites identified in our study last year remain active today confirms that abuse is economically sustainable for fraudsters," said Fred Felman, chief marketing officer for MarkMonitor. He added: "We expect attacks to grow both internationally and in complexity, further increasing the threat to organisations' reputations and revenues."
The study comes on the heels of internet body ICANN's release of the second draft of its Applicant Guidebook, an instruction manual for users applying for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs), which are set to be launched later this year.
ICANN recently identified trade mark protection as one of the key issues that require further work before more generic top-level domains (gTLDs) can be introduced. "Unless ICANN builds protections in, we'd only see this abuse spread," said Smith.
In more positive news for IP owners, Smith said that MarkMonitor saw the practice of domain name tasting or kiting, in which a temporary domain name is registered only to be cancelled five days later, "virtually disappeared in the middle of last year". The demise of this practice was due in part to steps taken by ICANN to end the free five-day Add Grace Period and in part to Google's implementation of a new domain policy that refuses to host ads on domains less than five days old.
The US, Germany and the UK continue to host the lion's share of brandjacking websites, according to the report.
Despite the report's mostly grim findings, Smith urged brand owners not to be discouraged. "Some think, because of the scale of the problem, they can't do anything about it; but the same technology that causes the problem can help solve it," she said.
The Brandjacking Index is an independent report that tracks and analyses abuses of 30 brands from the Best Global Brands study by Interbrand. MarkMonitor searches around 134 million public records for brand abuse and processes up to 16 million suspected phishing emails daily.
