Phishing attacks increased by over 31% in the third quarter

Cybersecurity firm Vade reports that in the third quarter alone, attackers sent over 203.9 million emails, up from 155.3 million in the previous quarter.

Vade, an email security and threat detection company, found that phishing emails in the third quarter of this year increased by more than 31% quarter-on-quarter, and the number of emails containing malware in the first three quarters was 55.8 million higher than in 2021.

Compared to the same period in 2021, malware emails in the third quarter of 2022 alone increased by 217%. The number of malware emails peaked in July, reaching 19.2 million, and then fell quarter-on-quarter in August and September, with the numbers dropping to 16.8 million and 16.5 million respectively.

According to the report, email is the preferred attack vector for phishing and malware, providing hackers with direct access to targets, which is the weakest link in an organisation's attack surface.

As attacks become increasingly sophisticated, they are also more capable of evading the basic security protection provided by email providers, on which nearly eight in ten enterprises still rely, according to Vade's research.

While attacker activity fluctuates widely, Vade's research found that impersonating trusted and established brands remains the most popular strategy for hackers.

The financial services industry remains the most impersonated industry, accounting for 32% of phishing emails detected by Vade, followed by cloud at 25%, social media at 22%, and internet/telecoms at 13%.

▌Phishing attacks are becoming increasingly targeted

As phishing attacks increase, the techniques used by attackers are also evolving. While phishing campaigns have traditionally been large-scale and random, recent signs indicate that hackers have shifted to more targeted attacks.

For example, the report highlights an attack observed in July 2022 where a phishing email impersonated Instagram to exploit the social media platform's verification process. The email sent to victims by the attacker displayed their actual username, indicating that hackers took the time to research and reconnoitre their targets before each attack.

Another worrying phenomenon mentioned in the report is hackers weaponising legitimate services to deliver and hide their phishing attacks. For example, a campaign was detected in September exploiting the French professional site Pôle Emploi to distribute phishing links to companies looking for job seekers.

"During the attack, hackers applied for job postings and uploaded PDF resumes containing malicious links. Once submitted, the platform generated an email containing the malicious PDF and automatically sent it to the hiring company for review."

This is a new attack strategy that may become more common in the future as it saves hackers time and effort in designing emails that impersonate organisations. It also increases the probability of a successful attack by reducing victims' suspicion of a malicious attack.

▌Raise employee awareness but do not rely solely on it

While providing training to employees about the dangers of phishing emails is undoubtedly beneficial, a blog post on the NCSC website states that replying to emails and clicking links are integral parts of work, making the habit of trying to stop clicking extremely difficult.

"Asking users to stop and deeply consider every single email does not leave them with enough time in their day to do their work," the post reads.

For enterprises with many employees, every employee is a source of uncertainty and could become a target researched and flagged by attackers. Phishing email prevention training can raise employee vigilance and, to some extent, reduce the chances of an enterprise being attacked. However, what enterprises truly need to rely on is a tight and comprehensive defense system of their own. Whether it can resist malicious attacks is information that enterprises need to be able to grasp at any time.

The Cyber Security Metrics Validation Platform can simulate a series of cyber fraud attack behaviors, such as phishing emails containing malicious links or malicious attachments, to provide defense system effectiveness validation services for enterprises. Through visual reports, it helps enterprises clarify the shortcomings of their defense systems and make corresponding adjustments and preparations, reducing the cost spent by safety teams in handling phishing emails.

You can easily select those validation experiments for phishing emails containing malicious links or malicious attachments in the Cyber Security Metrics Validation Platform, specifying AI attack and defense robots to send these emails to specified email addresses in the enterprise email system to verify whether your enterprise's email security products have the ability to detect these phishing emails and quarantine or delete them.

| Reference source:

https://www.csoonline.com/article/3678311/phishing-attacks-increase-by-over-31-in-third-quarter-report.html