Did you know Yahoo Impersonated in 20% of Phishing Attacks
Phishing attacks have been a thorn in the side of the average internet
user for quite a long time. In spite of the fact that this is the case,
they continue to rise unabated, and the malicious actors behind these
attacks seem to come up with new and better ways implementing them on a
regular basis.
Check Point Software Technologies
just published a new report that highlighted trends in phishing attacks
for the fourth quarter of 2022. One of the things that this report
revealed was which brands end up getting impersonated the most often in
phishing attacks, and it turns out that Yahoo is a prime candidate for
malicious actors who want to make their phishing attacks more successful
than might have been the case otherwise.
With all of that having
been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that Yahoo
was impersonated in around 20% of the phishing attacks that were noted
in the Q4 2022. Most of the phishing emails that are impersonating Yahoo
appear to claim that the recipient of the email has won some kind of
prize, even though no such program is being offered by Yahoo as of right
now.
Yahoo is not the only major corporation that sees itself
getting impersonated time and time again in phishing emails. DHL has
also been a popular choice, with 16% of Q4 2022 phishing attacks
impersonating the freight and delivery service.
Following that we
had Microsoft which has impersonated in 11% of such attacks, and these
three companies collectively account for just under half of all phishing
attacks. By comparison, Google is only impersonated in about 5.8% of
phishing attacks, at least as far as Q4 2022 is concerned.
Users
should receive some kind of training or education that might enable
them to better recognize phishing or other forms of malicious emails and
avoid interacting with them entirely. If an email is offering something
that seems too good to be true, it’s fairly likely that you are about
to get phished and it would be better to delete the email and ideally
report it for spam.
