The number of fraudulent websites in Q1 2022 triples compared to 2021

During the first quarter of 2022, BI.ZONE blocked a total of 16,311 malicious sources, which is three times more year over year

June 8, 2022

The number of attacks against brands and individuals using social engineering techniques increases noticeably each year. Over the first quarter of 2022, the BI.ZONE team blocked a total of 16,311 malicious sources: 9,048 in January, 4,488 in February, and 2,211 in March. This is triple the figure for the same period in 2021. The decrease in the number of fraudulent domains in March compared with the beginning of the year is due to the tensions in foreign relations, which caused scammers to focus on other types of attacks, such as DDoS. However, phishing is still a popular vector of attacks against various organizations.

To compare, during 2021, BI.ZONE blocked over 23,000 phishing and fraudulent websites, 3,382 of which were in the .ru/.рф domain. According to the Coordination Center, last year BI.ZONE blocked the largest number of phishing websites in the .ru/.рф domain among Russian vendors. Group-IB ranked second (3,349), and FinCERT of the Central Bank of the Russian Federation took third place (2,063).

We have a platform, BI.ZONE Brand Protection, that detects data leaks and helps control the media landscape and protect brand reputation on social networks. It includes monitoring of open sources, fraudulent, and restricted resources. We are constantly improving our algorithms and adding new automated tools. This allows us to cover more and more fraudulent sources and better protect our clients

Evgeny Voloshin

Chief Security Officer, BI.ZONE

The clients of BI.ZONE Brand Protection include more than 100 companies from different industries: retail, finance, healthcare, telecom, and IT. Among them are the strongest brands in Russia, according to Brand Finance.

If you suspect that a page might be phishing, you should report it to BI.ZONE or any of the other organizations listed on the website of the Coordination Center. The page will be checked and blocked if confirmed as fraudulent.