In a recent mid-year report, Bolster has highlighted a significant uptick in phishing attacks, driven largely by advancements in artificial intelligence and a shift towards multi-channel strategies. The "Phishing in Focus: 2024 Mid-Year Report" draws on data from Bolster's CheckPhish service, providing a detailed overview of the evolving threat landscape from January to July 2024.
Key Findings:
Proliferation of Phishing Sites: The report notes a dramatic rise in the number of new phishing sites, with over 38,000 new sites being launched daily in the first half of 2024.
Shift to Multi-Channel Phishing: Phishing attacks are no longer limited to email. Cybercriminals are increasingly using text messages, social media, malicious domains, and even voice calls. There has been a 170% increase in phishing attacks originating from social media platforms, and a 102% rise in attacks via mobile app stores between February and June 2024.
Targeting Elections: With the U.S. presidential election on the horizon, the report highlights a surge in election-themed phishing scams, primarily orchestrated by actors from China, Russia, and Iran. These nation-state actors are responsible for 75% of such activities, aiming to steal data and identities, and engage in financial theft.
Exploitation of Events: Scammers are capitalizing on significant events and disruptions, such as the recent CrowdStrike outage, to launch attacks. In this instance, over 40 typosquat domains imitating CrowdStrike were created within 24 hours.
Industry Targets: The technology sector remains the most targeted by phishing scams, followed closely by finance, e-commerce, entertainment, and marketing sectors. These industries are particularly vulnerable due to their rich reservoirs of valuable data.
Global Trends: The U.S., Germany, and Canada lead in hosting phishing domains, with U.S.-based services like Cloudflare and Amazon being significant hosts for these sites.
AI's Role in Phishing
The report underscores the transformative impact of AI on phishing tactics. AI is enabling scammers to create more realistic and sophisticated attacks across various platforms, at unprecedented speed and scale. This development poses a growing threat to both individuals and businesses, particularly in a year marked by heightened political tensions and economic instability. “We know the frequency of phishing attacks is increasing, as hackers utilize AI to execute more scams than ever before. In fact, phishing scams are being hosted in the U.S. at a rate of nearly double, compared to 2023. The trend is only accelerating. In May alone, we logged a daily average of more than 45K malicious phishing sites,” said Abhilash Garimella, vice president of Research at Bolster. “More troubling, our researchers identified packages of voter data stolen over the past decade, for sale on the dark web and used by threat actors to create fake identification cards, potentially leading to identity theft or voter fraud.”