A new report shows massive increases in browser attacks in the second half of 2023, with over 31,000 threats specifically designed to bypass security solution detection.
I spend a lot of time on this blog talking about phishing, social engineering, smishing, deepfakes and more – all topics centered around attack techniques designed to interact and fool a user.
But when cybercriminals target browser users, there’s an entirely different level of trust; with email, there’s a level of expectation around how an email should look, where it’s from and what it should contain.
But when it’s a browser, all it takes is a convincing webpage or the misuse of an exploit to potentially invoke and start off an attack. And according to security vendor Menlo Security’s State of Browser Security report, these browser-based phishing attacks are very much on the rise – remember, when we’re talking about 200% increases.
That’s huge.
Meno Security detected over 550,000 browser-based attacks in 2023 – something organizations typically have little visibility into. And the use of evasive techniques is also growing. Menlo provides the example of Legacy URL Reputation Evasion (LURE), where URLs are either hijacked trusted sites, or domains left dormant until their URL reputation builds over time.
These types of evasive techniques are so powerful that Menlo detected over 11,000 zero-hour browser-based phishing attacks that, “exhibited no signature or digital breadcrumb, meaning no existing SWG or endpoint tool was able to detect and block these attacks.”
In addition to considering security solutions specifically designed to protect against browser-based attacks, also account for the phishing aspect. This is where users are mistakenly led to engage with the attack by providing credentials, clicking links and launching executables.
By educating your users with security awareness training about these kinds of attacks, the effectiveness of the attack diminishes as users stop interacting, thus neutralizing the power of browser-based attacks.
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