Demand for Phishing Website Builders More Than Doubles

The demand for phishing website builder kits has significantly increased in the cybercriminal community, with both the number of available kits and sellers more than doubling. At the same time, the creators of these tools have raised their prices.

According to researchers from Group-IB, the number of phishing website builders offered on hacker forums more than doubled in 2019. Similarly, the number of individuals willing to sell these kits also grew by over two times.

This surge in demand has led to a sharp increase in the average price for a single phishing kit. The cost rose by 149%, reaching an average of $304. Group-IB experts note that the growing popularity of these tools is due to their ease of creation and the simple schemes for making money with them.

Cybercriminals typically disguise their phishing sites as online services and projects belonging to major corporations. To do this, they need well-known brand names. In 2019, the most commonly used brands by phishers were Amazon, Google, and Office 365.

Group-IB specialists also point out that free phishing kits can sometimes be found on hacker forums. However, such “generosity” often means the kits contain backdoors that send all compromised data back to the kit’s author.

In 2019, the Group-IB Threat Intelligence system identified more than 16,000 unique phishing kits.