Cyota Identifies Major New Phishing Threat - Personalized Phishing Attacks; Organized Group Now Targeting Individual Accountholders by Name, Using Their Real Stolen Credentials to Trick Them into Revealing Even More Sensitive Information.

NEW YORK -- Cyota (www.cyota.com), the leading provider of anti-fraud and online security solutions for financial institutions, has detected a dangerous new phishing attack - which Cyota has coined 'personalized phishing' - where an organized gang of fraudsters is using real stolen information to target accountholders by name to lure individuals into divulging additional sensitive information.

Cyota's 24x7 Anti-Fraud Command Center (AFCC) detected that attack against several of its anti-phishing customers. The AFCC has immediately begun blocking access to and taking down these fraudulent sites as part of its FraudAction(TM) anti-phishing and anti-pharming service.

Contrary to a typical phishing attack, where fraudsters send out hundreds of thousands of e-mails and hope for the best results possible, personalized phishing attacks target individual named accountholders at specific banks. In order to achieve maximal effectiveness, the fraudsters use real stolen information about the accountholder - such as the person's name, e-mail address, correct full account number, and other bank information - to make the e-mail look more legitimate and give the accountholder a false sense of security.

The motive behind this sophisticated fraud is to enhance existing lists of stolen credentials with even more sensitive information not yet possessed by the fraudsters, such as ATM PIN numbers or credit card CVV codes. These complete sets of credentials have a much higher resale value among the online fraud communities than just the names and account numbers.

"Personalized phishing dramatically increases the chances of accountholders responding to the attack and, if successful, provides fraudsters with even more valuable information that allows them to conduct extensive fraud," said Amir Orad, co-founder and executive vice president of marketing at Cyota. "This highly coordinated, two-phase fraud attack demonstrates the lengths that fraudsters will go to maintain a high rate of success, and the need for constant innovation among banks and their security providers to match the continuing evolution of online threats."

Cyota advises that if consumers get an e-mail from a bank or online merchant requesting personal or account information that they do not to click on any link within the e-mail, but instead go directly to the site to verify the request or complete the transaction.

This announcement comes on the heels of Cyota's last week launch of its anti-pharming service, which is currently in use by 13 of its anti-phishing customers.

About Cyota

Cyota is the leading provider of security and anti-fraud solutions to more than 10,000 financial institutions worldwide. Cyota services multiple clients in North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific with anti-fraud and security systems currently available to over 400 million accountholders. Founded in 1999, Cyota is headquartered in New York with offices worldwide. Cyota is led by a respected management team with extensive experience in the security, Internet and banking industry. For more information please visit www.cyota.com