Phishing Attacks Up 22% in First Half, Down Significantly in June: Report

The volume of first-half 2021 phishing attacks jumped 22% from a year earlier, but phishing volume in June “dipped dramatically” for the first time in six months, immediately after a very high volume in May, reported PhishLabs Tuesday. Bad actors are using phishing “to fleece proprietary information” in increasingly more sophisticated attacks, “based on growth in areas such as cryptocurrency and sites that use single-sign-on,” said Chief Technology Officer John LaCour. Of the significant decline in bad behavior from May to June, “we’ll continue to monitor through the summer and analyze if we’re seeing a trend in the right direction, or if attackers simply took a summer vacation.”