Israeli anti-phishing vendor IronScales came out with an interesting new report about phishing trends.
They looked at more than 8,500 attacks that bypassed spam filters, from more than a hundred of their customers covering over half a million mailboxes, to better understand phishing, attack patterns, and phishing techniques & tools.
Here are some key findings:
- About 77% of the attacks targeted 10 mailboxes or less
- One third of the attacks targeted just one mailbox
- Nearly half of the attacks lasted less than 24 hours
- But 35% spanned 12 months or more, in drip-campaign style
- Hyper-personalized targeting has proven effective at social engineering people susceptible to emails written with a personal touch
Their point is that phishing attacks are getting more sophisticated and are micro-targeted so that they easily bypass rule- and signature-based spam filters. We agree.
You can get their full report here: