Security firm FireEye Inc. has published the results of its report on email threats for the first quarter of 2019.
The company analyzed a sample of 1.3 billion emails and found an increase in three types of attacks : spoofed phishing attempts, URL attacks (using HTTPS protocol), and cloud-based attacks, which focus on file sharing services
FireEye observed the following:
Phishing attacks increased by 17% in the first quarter of 2019:
In a typical phishing email, the hacker impersonates a familiar person or a well-known and trusted company in order to trick the user into opening a malicious link contained within the email. In this way, the hacker manages to steal the credentials or credit card information, etc.
Compared to the previous quarter, there was a 17% increase in attacks in the first quarter of 2019. Most attacks were against Microsoft (30%), followed by OneDrive, Apple, PayPal, and Amazon (6-7% each).
Attacks on URLs using HTTPS increased by 26%:
FireEye had already seen an increase in these attacks in 2018. This increase continued in the first quarter of 2019, by 26%.
Hackers exploit HTTPS, relying on most people's perception that HTTPS is a secure option for browsing the web.
File sharing services are used by hackers to deliver malicious payloads:
A significant increase was also observed in cloud-based services, especially those specializing in file sharing.
According to the FireEye report, there has been a dramatic increase in adding links to malicious files to popular and trusted services, such as WeTransfer, Google Drive, and OneDrive. Dropbox was the most frequent target of hackers.
Many scams involve impersonation. Hackers pose as the CEO or senior executive of a company and scam employees. One such attack targeted a company’s payments department. Over the past quarter, FireEye has seen an increasing number of threats in two areas:
Payroll: Hackers target an organization's payroll department with an emailrequesting changes to an employee's personal information, such as bank details, in order to transfer the salary to a third-party account.
Supply chain: Here, hackers send emails impersonating a trusted supplier, again with the aim of transferring money to third-party accounts.
Hackers are constantly discovering new attack methods and new targets. According to FireEye, the problem is that these new targets may not be prepared or have the necessary knowledge to recognize the attack. Most of the time, companies realize they have been attacked too late.
