Phishing remains a top initial access vector for cyberattacks, according to researchers at Cisco Talos. The researchers have published a report on threat trends in the third quarter of 2024, finding that attackers are increasingly targeting valid accounts to gain footholds within organizations.

From April to September 2024, Netskope Threat Labs tracked a 10-fold increase in traffic to phishing pages crafted through Webflow. The campaigns target sensitive information from different crypto wallets, including Coinbase, MetaMask, Phantom, Trezor, and Bitbuy, as well as login credentials for multiple company webmail platforms, as well as Microsoft365 login credentials.

Threat actors spread malware via callback phishing, Mandiant analyzes time-to-exploit trends, and PureLogs targets the Chrome browser.

Researchers at Trustwave observed a 140% increase in callback phishing attacks between July and September 2024. Callback phishing is a social engineering tactic that involves emails and phone calls to trick users into handing over login credentials or other sensitive data or installing malware. The attacks begin with a phishing email that appears to be a notification for something that needs to be addressed urgently, such as an order invoice or an account termination notice.

Sixty-four percent of IT leaders have clicked on phishing links, a new survey by Arctic Wolf has found. Despite this, 80% of these same professionals are confident their organization won’t fall victim to a phishing attack. The survey found that 34% of organizations send simulated phishing emails to their employees at least once every two weeks, but only 15% of end users are aware of them. Likewise, the IT and security leaders surveyed said 83% of their employees fall for the phishing simulations.

Previously, Trustwave SpiderLabs covered a massive fake order spam scheme that impersonated a tech support company and propagated via Google Groups. Since then, we have observed more spam campaigns using this hybrid form of cyberattack with varying tactics, techniques, and procedures (TTP). Between July and September, we witnessed a 140% increase in these spam campaigns. In this blog, we will showcase the different spam techniques used in these phishing emails.

Our Threat Intelligence team has observed an emerging obfuscation technique, specifically used to make Natural Language Processing (NLP) detection capabilities less effective. Broadly, malicious actors are adding additional characters, break lines, and legitimate links to the end of a phishing email in an attempt to disguise their malicious payloads amongst the noise and evade NLP detection.

This is a burning issue that must be considered by all organizations striving to decrease their cybersecurity vulnerabilities. Keep reading to get familiar with the risks of GenAI utilized for email attacks and how advanced implementations can counterpose malicious activities.

Microsoft warns that threat actors are abusing legitimate file-hosting services to launch phishing attacks. These attacks are more likely to bypass security filters and appear more convincing to employees who frequently use these services. “Legitimate hosting services, such as SharePoint, OneDrive, and Dropbox, are widely used by organizations for storing, sharing, and collaborating on files,” Microsoft says.