Phishing attacks continued to rise into the summer of 2019 with cybercrime gangs’ focus on branded webmail and SaaS providers remaining very keen, according to the APWG report.

The report also documents how criminals are increasingly perpetrating business email compromise (BEC) attacks by using gift card cash-out schemes.

The number of phishing attacks observed in the second quarter of 2019 eclipsed the number seen in the three quarters before. The total number of phishing sites detected in April through June 2019 was 182,465. This topped the 180,768 seen in 1Q2019, and was up notably from the 138,328 seen in the fourth quarter of 2018.