Phishing Dominance Revealed: Cloudflare’s Report Spells Out Urgent Warning

Cloudflare unveiled its inaugural 2023 Phishing Threats Report. The report sheds light on the persistent and escalating menace of phishing, an ever-evolving form of cybercrime that preys on human fallibility and exploits the ubiquity of email.

Phishing, the art of luring unsuspecting individuals into divulging sensitive information or clicking malicious links, has established itself as the most prevalent and rapidly growing online threat. Cloudflare’s extensive research underscores how this insidious activity has metastasised across the digital landscape, impacting organisations of all sizes and sectors.

The report underscores the dual objectives of threat actors behind phishing campaigns. Their primary aim is to establish an air of authenticity and legitimacy in the eyes of their intended victims. Subsequently, the endeavour to manipulate these victims into engaging with the malicious content, often culminating in the dreaded “click.”

Even though business email compromise [BEC] has amassed staggering losses surpassing US$50 billion, the scope of victims stretches far beyond corporate giants. Cloudflare’s report emphasises the expansive ramifications of phishing, infiltrating not only Fortune 500 corporations but also small local businesses and the public sector. Notably, the report highlights an alarming uptick in email threats targeting political entities. Cloudflare’s vigilant email security service thwarted approximately 150,000 phishing attempts directed at campaign officials during the lead-up to the 2022 US midterm elections.

Key insights from the report include:

• Malicious links emerged as the leading threat category, constituting a staggering 35.6 percent of detected threats.

• Identity deception threats have surged year-on-year, climbing from 10.3 percent to 14.2 percent [equivalent to 39.6 million] of total detections.

• Attackers assumed the personas of more than 1,000 distinct organisations, embarking an over 1 billion brand impersonation endeavours. A notable 51.7 percent of these instances involved impersonation of 20 widely recognised brands.

Among the most impersonated brands, the report reveals Microsoft at the forefront, followed by other prominent names like Google, Salesforce, and Notion.so. Newly registered domains accounted for 30 percent of detected threats, positioning them as the second most significant threat category.

The unsettling revelation was that email authentication is not an infallible defence. A striking 89 percent of unwanted messages managed to “pass” SPF, DKIM, or DMARC authentication checks. Matthew Prince, the CEO of Cloudflare, decried phishing as an “epidemic” that has infiltrated every nook and cranny of the Internet. He stressed the necessity of a comprehensive Zero Trust solution that encompasses robust email security, noting the dire consequences of neglecting this pivotal facet in the contemporary threat landscape.

Bashar Bashaireh, the Managing Director for the Middle East & Turkey at Cloudflare, echoed these sentiments, asserting that email remains the most exploited business applications, acting as the primary point of entry for cyber incidents.

Cloudflare’s report, a result of meticulous data analysis and security trends derives from the staggering 112 billion threats blocked daily by its global network, offers an unprecedented glimpse into the evolving dynamics of phishing. The study involved scrutinising more than 279 million email threat indicators, dissecting 250 million malicious messages, and evaluating over 1 billion instances of brand impersonation.

These insights, gathered from an impressive 13 billion emails processed between May 2022 and May 2023, were further informed by a Forrester Consulting study commissioned by Cloudflare. The latter research entailed surveying 316 security decision-makers across North America, EMEA, and APAC between January and February 2023.

Cloudflare’s report serves as a clarion call for organisations across the spectrum to fortify their defences against this pernicious threat, emphasising the pivotal role of trust in the digital realm and the imperative need to safeguard it.