Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Even though cybersecurity is always changing, phishing attacks are still a threat that is getting worse. The goal of these attacks is to get people to give up private data like passwords, financial information, or company secrets by using social engineering tricks. As technology has improved, phishing schemes have grown more complex in 2024. They now use convincing methods to target both people and businesses. According to new studies, 91% of cyberattacks start with a phishing email.

The newly released single largest analysis of cyber attacks across all of 2023 show a strong tie between the use of phishing and techniques designed to gain credentialed access. I’ve stood on the “phishing is a problem” soapbox for many years, attempting to focus the attention of cybersecurity teams on the single largest problem within the organization: the employees that fall for social engineering tactics time and time again.

Threat actors are exploiting Microsoft Visio files and SharePoint to launch two-step phishing attacks, according to researchers at Perception Point. “Perception Point’s security researchers have observed a dramatic increase in two-step phishing attacks leveraging.vsdx files – a file extension rarely used in phishing campaigns until now,” the researchers explain.

Egress’ Threat Intelligence Team has identified that over 7% of global phishing attacks now use an emerging obfuscation technique that employs Accelerated Mobile Page (AMP) links to mask malicious URLs. Often embedded in phishing emails that impersonate well-known brands, threat actors aim to undermine the 'hover' technique taught in most security awareness training programs.

CYJAX has identified a novel phishing technique which is used to harvest Microsoft credentials via websites which are masqueraded as locked Microsoft Word documents. This technique, which CYJAX is calling DirtyWord, uses a blurred Word document as the page background to inform the user that they must log in to view the document. Whilst CYJAX has not observed the delivery mechanism of the phish, it appears that it likely occurs through spear-phishing emails.

Enforce identity verification throughout the employee life cycle using Persona and Okta’s out-of-the-box integration for identity verification. Joshua Rodriguez is a product marketing manager at Persona focused on our Graph product and financial institution and public sector verticals. You'll find him around the Bay Area exploring museums with his wife and young daughter.

If you think you’ve accidentally opened a phishing PDF, it’s important to immediately disconnect your device from the internet, back up your files, run a virus scan on your device and change your passwords. Typically, you can spot a phishing attempt if an email contains urgent and threatening language, too-good-to-be-true offers, spelling and grammatical errors or requests for private information.

Attackers are abusing Eventbrite’s scheduling platform to send phishing emails, according to researchers at Perception Point. These attacks increased by 900% between July and October 2024. “Perception Point researchers observed phishing emails delivered via ‘noreply@events.eventbritecom,’” the researchers write.

Sophos describes a QR code phishing (quishing) campaign that targeted its employees in an attempt to steal information. The attackers sent phishing emails that appeared to be related to employee benefits and retirement plans. The emails contained PDF attachments which, when opened, displayed a QR code. If an employee scanned the code, they would be taken to a phishing page that spoofed a Microsoft 365 login form. The page was designed to steal login credentials and multi-factor authentication codes.

Threat actor uses the Gophish toolkit in phishing campaigns, attackers bypass secure email gateways and antivirus scanners, and Bumblebee malware returns.