The PhishLabs Blog

The United States is once again, and for the foreseeable future, the most targeted country by threat actors’ phishing attacks. Making up an astonishing 84% of all phishing volume, the U.S. saw a single percent decline from 85% last year. But...

In this year’s annual Phishing Trends and Intelligence report we identified phishing sites targeting more than 1,200 different brands belonging to 773 parent institutions. Of the top five targeted industries, they accounted for 83.9% of total phishing volume. There are two big takeaways from this finding: financial institutions are back on top, and each industry is still at risk.

Back in the olden days of the internet, when AOL’s dial-up connection still made horrible sounds prior to getting you access to your inbox, phishing attacks were born. Somewhere in the mid-1990s, internet-based social engineering attacks were born and designed to capture credentials on AOL by way of a program called AOHell, and expanded on to stealing credit card numbers or other private accounts. That was nearly 25 years ago, yet to this day, social engineering-based attacks still happen, and in more mass than ever before.

There are all sorts of things that end up in your inbox, but among those that are reported to a SOC or security team, malicious content only makes up a small percent. Among the analysis provided in this year’s annual Phishing Trends and Intelligence (PTI) report, we added a new section based on data from our Phishing Incident Response team.

Phishing has and will continue to be a threat to anyone connected to the web. This is a fact set in stone, and regardless of advancements in technology, social engineering will allow these attacks to continue to be successful.

Recently, our Director of Product Management, Cary Hudgins, discussed how to develop a digital risk protection plan for the modern enterprise. One of the many reasons why such a plan should be created is because, in today’s world, an enterprise organization’s digital footprint can be vast and will continue to grow.

Taking Advantage of Our Tendency to Simplify

There’s an old joke floating around the Internet that claims NASA, upon discovering that standard ballpoint pens would not work in space, invested millions of dollars and years of R&D. The resulting pen was supposedly capable of writing in zero-G, on any surface, and in temperatures that would surely kill any astronaut. When confronted with the same problem, the Soviets simply handed their cosmonauts pencils.

In May of 2018, we reported on three Romanian threat actors who were extradited to the U.S. for their involvement in a SMiShing and Vishing fraud scheme. At the time of reporting, the expected losses were listed around $18 million but have since risen to more than $21 million.

It’s time to take action against phish! Phishing attacks are no longer few and far between, they are the norm.

Regardless of your company’s investments in filtering technologies and countermeasures, suspicious and malicious emails make it into employee inboxes. It only takes one to cost your company time, money, and lost reputation.

We’ve previously reported on how, due to the rise in phishing attempts leveraging SSL certificates, the  icon in your web browser gives your users a false sense of security. The threat, however, doesn’t end with your web browser.