PRESS RELEASE
SAN FRANCISCO, February 15, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Expiration, a global leader in threat detection and response with more than 1.4 billion protected inboxes, today announced its annual Phishers’ Favorites report for 2023. Phishers’ Favorites Year-in-Review is a ranking of the 20 brands most impersonated in phishing. Featured in this year’s report, Facebook was the most impersonated brand after a 74% year-over-year (YoY) increase in unique phishing websites, more than double the runner-up on this year’s list, Microsoft. This marks a record number of phishing websites for the social media company and for the third year in a row it took the top spot.
Phishers’ Favorites 2023 Year-in-Review, which can be read full here, analyzes the entire year’s phishing data captured by Vade’s technology. For this report, Vade analyzed 197,000 phishing pages linked from unique phishing emails between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023.
The reach of phishing on social media increases significantly
Among all industries, social media accounted for the largest year-over-year increase in phishing URLs, at 110%. In addition to Facebook, Instagram (No. 9 on this year’s list), WhatsApp (No. 13) and LinkedIn (No. 23) all contributed to the increase. The rise in phishing threats comes at a time when revenues from social media advertising continue to grow and businesses are increasingly relying on these platforms for sales, marketing and recruiting.
The financial services sector remains the most personified
2023 proved to be another typical year for financial services, with the sector maintaining its status as the one most impersonated by hackers. The industry leads all others in terms of total unique phishing URLs (64,009 or 32% of the total). In the financial services sector, Crédit Agricole, SoftBank, Paypal and Bank of America made the top 10, followed by La Banque Postale, Société Générale and American Express.
Microsoft, Google and Netflix lead the cloud brands victimized by phishing attacks
Along with social media, the cloud industry was the only other industry to see an increase in unique phishing URLs in 2023. This was largely due to Microsoft (No. 2), Google (No. 11), and Netflix (No. 19). Microsoft and Google’s sustained popularity among hackers follows growing demand for their productivity suite platforms, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, respectively. This year, Microsoft announced that it had achieved more than 382 million paid seats in the third quarter of 2023. Meanwhile, Google announced that more than 9 million organizations pay for Google Workspace. Both product suites remain popular targets for phishing attacks.
Additional key findings from the Phishers’ Favorites 2023 report include:
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Hackers abuse legitimate services to bypass detection by email security solutions.
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Quishing attacks are on the rise and are emerging techniques.
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Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) markets are thriving.
Read the full report at vadesecure.com.
About Vade
Vade is a leading cybersecurity company specializing in AI-powered threat detection and response solutions for the Microsoft collaboration suite, with a focus on serving small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and their IT vendors. managed services (MSP). With a global presence in eight locations, including the United States, France, Japan, Canada and Israel, Vade’s flagship product, Vade for Microsoft 365, seamlessly provides additional cybersecurity services for Microsoft’s collaboration suite . The company’s best-in-class security solutions integrate robust AI-based protection and automated threat remediation, resulting in improved efficiency, reduced administrative costs, and optimized cybersecurity investments.
Vade provides distinctive protection against phishing, spear phishing and malware, ensuring error-free configurations and enabling rapid deployment. Vade is a trusted choice for some of the world’s leading Internet service and security providers, ensuring the security of 1.4 billion email inboxes.
To find out more, visit www.vadesecure.com and follow us on Twitter @vadesecure or LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/vade-secure/.