Subj : Email threats are becoming more dangerous than ever  so keep an e
To   : All
From : TechnologyDaily
Date : Wed Jun 19 2024 13:30:05

Email threats are becoming more dangerous than ever  so keep an eye on your 
inbox

Date:
Wed, 19 Jun 2024 12:25:41 +0000

Description:
Business email compromise attacks are on the rise, and so are QR code attacks.

FULL STORY
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Cyberattacks spread via email are still rising, and with generative 
artificial intelligence (AI), they have gotten even more dangerous, a new 
report from Barracuda Networks has claimed. 

After analyzing 69 million attacks across 4.5 million mailboxes over the past 
12 months, Barracuda said business email compromise (BEC), conversation 
hijacking, and QR code attacks were all growing. 

In fact, BEC attacks now make up a tenth (10.6%) of all email-based social 
engineering attacks, up from 8% in 2022, and up from 9% in 2021. At the same 
time, conversation hijacking made up 0.5% of all social engineering attacks 
in the past year, which is an increase of some 70%, compared to the 0.3% back 
in 2022. Gmail and bit.ly 

This methods overall share is relatively small since it requires a lot of 
effort to execute, but the payout can still be significant, Barracuda warns. 

With conversation hijacking, a threat actor will compromise a persons email 
account, and look for conversations with potential targets. They will then 
hijack the conversation, and reply to the latest email, continuing the chain 
of communication. That way, the victim has no reason not to trust the 
contents of the email, making distributing malware and stealing sensitive 
data that much easier. 

Finally, around 1 in 20 mailboxes were targeted with QR code attacks, which 
are relatively successful since they mostly bypass traditional email 
filtering solutions. Furthermore, they make the victims use a personal device 
to scan the QR code, which is usually not protected by corporate security 
software. 

The attackers will usually go for Gmail users, Barracuda added, since Gmail 
accounted for 22% of the domains used for social engineering. Whats more, 
bit.ly is the go-to tool for URL shortening, used in almost 40% of social 
engineering attacks. 

IT and security professionals need to stay focused on the evolution of email 
threats and what this means for security measures and incident response, said 
Sheila Hara, Sr. Director of Product Management at Barracuda. 

This involves understanding how attackers can leverage generative AI to 
advance and scale their activities, and the latest tactics theyre using to 
make it past security controls. The best defense is AI-powered cloud email 
security technology that can adapt quickly to a changing landscape and doesnt 
solely rely on looking for malicious links or attachments. More from 
TechRadar Pro The many moving parts of business email compromise Here's a 
list of the best firewalls today These are the best endpoint protection tools 
right now



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Link to news story:
https://www.techradar.com/pro/security/email-threats-are-becoming-more-dangero
us-than-ever-so-keep-an-eye-on-your-inbox


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