Phishing uses deceptive messages to steal credentials or deliver malware, while user verification, MFA, and email filtering reduce the risk.
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Background for this topic.
Phishing is deceptive communication—by email, text, phone, or a fake website—that impersonates a trusted person or service to make someone disclose credentials, approve a transaction, reveal sensitive information, or run harmful software. Attackers use it to bypass technical controls by persuading a legitimate user to perform an action, and may target employees, customers, administrators, or suppliers.
Its impact can include account takeover, unauthorized payments, exposure of personal or business data, and access to internal systems. The most effective control for stolen-password phishing is phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication, such as hardware-backed passkeys or security keys, which binds authentication to the legitimate site. Organizations should also filter and authenticate messaging where possible, use password managers, restrict risky actions, train users to verify unusual requests through a separate channel, and provide rapid reporting so suspected credentials or sessions can be revoked.
The dangerous malware appears to be well and truly back in action, sporting new variants and security-dodging behaviors in a wave of recent phishing campaigns.
Financial sector hardest hit
Hundreds of millions of stolen credentials and a cool $59 million An ongoing phishing campaign targeting Facebook users may have already netted hundreds of millions of credentials and a claimed $59 million, and it's only getting bigger.…
Researchers have uncovered a large-scale phishing operation that abused Facebook and Messenger to lure millions of users to phishing pages, tricking them into entering their account credentials and seeing advertisements. [...]
A previously unknown malware loader named SVCReady has been discovered in phishing attacks, featuring an unusual way of loading the malware from Word documents onto compromised machines. [...]
A critical Windows zero-day vulnerability, known as Follina and still waiting for an official fix from Microsoft, is now being actively exploited in ongoing phishing attacks to infect recipients with Qbot malware. [...]
A new wave of phishing campaigns has been observed spreading a previously documented malware called SVCReady
Windows giant gets court order to take over dot-coms and more Microsoft has obtained a court order to seize 41 domains used by what the Windows giant said was an Iranian cybercrime group that ran a spear-phishing operation targeting organizations in the US, Middle East, and India. …
European governments and US local governments were the targets of a phishing campaign using malicious Rich Text Format (RTF) documents designed to exploit a critical Windows zero-day vulnerability known as Follina. [...]
An unnamed state actor is behind a phishing campaign targeting European and local US government entities
Microsoft's Digital Crimes Unit (DCU) last week disclosed that it had taken legal proceedings against an Iranian threat actor dubbed Bohrium in connection with a spear-phishing operation
A suspected state-aligned threat actor has been attributed to a new set of attacks exploiting the Microsoft Office "Follina" vulnerability to target government entities in Europe and the U.S
Security researchers are seeing an uptick in the use of reverse tunnel services along with URL shorteners for large-scale phishing campaigns, making the malicious activity more difficult to stop. [...]