A new report has shown that instances of cybersquatting surged by 18 per cent in 2008 for the second year in a row.

According to MarkMonitor, cybersquatting was the most used tactic by so-called brandjackers last year, with other common attacks including false association, pay-per-click abuse, objectionable content, unauthorised sales channels and phishing.

MarkMonitor identified 440,584 cases of cybersquatting in the final three months of 2008, including some instances where cybersquatting was combined with other attacks in an attempt to do serious damage to brands' reputations.

"We expect attacks to grow both internationally and in complexity, further increasing the threat to organisations' reputations and revenues," commented Frederick Felman, chief marketing officer of MarkMonitor.

Last year, the World Intellectual Property Organization suggested that the number of generic and country code top level domain disputes filed with it rose by 48 per cent between 2005 and 2007.

Companies in the biotechnology and pharmaceuticals, banking and finance, internet and IT, retail and entertainment sectors were found to be the most likely to file such disputes with the organisation.

Domain name cases tended to reflect current trends, popular culture and upcoming events, including Facebook and MySpace, the 2010 FIFA World Cup in South Africa, JRR Tolkien's book The Hobbit and popular TV show The Simpsons.