The Cyberoam co-branded CYREN Internet Threats Trend report for Q3 is out! Download your copy right away! The report highlights an unusual rise in attacks on Apple platforms, along with CYREN analytics that indicate a considerable increase in Apple Users being targeted.

In early September of the world learned of celebrity photos being leaked on the Internet. Celebrities have been often known for their preferences with Apple products over others and the news took no time to spread that cybercriminals gained access to the photos by hacking into the Apple’s iCloud service. Investigators suspect that the breach is the work of a ring of hackers (some of which are likely based in the United States), but their identities remain unknown. Security experts also speculate that other highly personal information, such as phone call logs, calendars, text messages, and even confidential documents such as contracts and movie scripts could also have been stolen, as this type of data is also commonly backed up in iCloud.

While the iOS and OSX operating systems still remain relatively safe, more and more individuals globally are buying Apple devices and using Apple services, which could account (in part) for the increased targeting of Apple users. There are currently more than 800 million Apple IDs in use. Over 300 million individuals hold iCloud accounts, giving them access to 5 GB of online storage, as well as email, calendar, and photo stream. And, phishing attacks are at least three times more likely to be successful on a smart phone than on a desktop or laptop.

CYREN Analysis

With the news of the Apple-based hack into celebrity accounts, CYREN examined its own analytics to see if there were any notable Apple phishing trends. Overall, phishing scams targeting Apple users were up 246% from the 1st quarter of 2014, with CYREN tracking over 7,000 new Apple phishing sites in the week of the celebrity hack.

In one Apple phishing example captured by CYREN, a criminal attempted to mislead the victim by faking the URL.

On top of increased phishing, CYREN began to wonder if Apple made the situation more confusing for users by initiating a new email alert campaign shortly after news of the celebrity attacks. It informed Apple iCloud users that their Apple ID was recently used to sign into an iCloud account via a web browser. The email, while legitimate, has the potential to confuse recipients since it looks similar to phishing emails and provides scammers the opportunity to copy official Apple content and use it fake emails.

In addition to this, the CYREN Internet Threat Trends report talks about quarterly malware trends, spam trends, top spam topics and spam zombie countries. For more detailed information and more download the complete report here.

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