Since phishing attacks need legitimacy to increase their deliverability, this latest twist shows how phishing scammers and hackers are working together to ensure phishing attacks continue.
Historically, we’ve seen phishing attacks simply leverage a legitimate service (e.g., google, Microsoft 365, etc.) to send emails and host phishing web pages. But, last month we saw an attack combination that was certainly unusual. Domain Hosting provider, Namecheap’s email service SendGrid was hacked in an effort to use the compromised email access so delivery of phishing would be all but guaranteed.
The attack was first noted on Twitter on February 7th:
Emails impersonating DHL and MetaMask were sent out, soliciting personal information, payment details, and logon credentials. Namecheap themselves acknowledged an “upstream” attack (likely not wanting to bad mouth their email partner SendGrid) on February 12th.
Source: Twitter
According to BleepingComputer, who received some of the phishing emails, the attacks also used NameCheap servers to host the spoofed phishing pages.
Cybercriminals are always looking for ways to establish legitimacy. And given the cybercrime ecosystem that exists, it’s not too far-fetched to think that this kind of attack could become a business model.
