An Exploration of the Design Features of Phishing Attacks

Phishing is a growing phenomenon, which has not only caused billions in losses, but also has eroded consumer confidence in online transactions. To develop effective countermeasures, we need to understand how phishing e-mails exploit human vulnerabilities. We develop a framework to explore phishing from the perspective of victims. The framework helps understand different features that are utilized by phishers in designing e-mails and websites. We further explore the design patterns of phishing attacks. We collect 195 phishing records from the antiphishing work group website. Using content analysis and two-step cluster analysis, we examine those attacks for the presence of design features identified through our framework. We find that phishing attacks in different time periods present different characteristics, and the quality of phishing attacks have advanced consistently over time. Finally, on the basis of the location of the phishing hosts, we group the