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Cloudflare’s pages.dev and workers.dev Domains Increasingly Abused for Phishing

Fortra has observed a rising trend in legitimate service abuse, with a significant volume of attacks targeting Cloudflare Pages. Workers.dev is a domain used by Cloudflare Workers’ deployment services, while Pages.dev is used by Cloudflare’s Pages platform that facilitates the development of web pages and sites. Fortra’s Suspicious Email Analysis (SEA) team has identified different threats being...
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Active Phishing Campaign: Twilio SendGrid Abuse

Active Phishing Campaigns are coordinated attacks that Fortra has observed bypassing email security gateways and filtering tools. The following analysis includes examples, high-level details, and associated threat indicators. Sample Email Lure Sample 1: Vishing Example Sample 2: Office365 Phishing Example...
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UDRP Domain Takeovers vs. Domain Takedowns

What’s the difference between UDRP Domain Takeovers and Domain Takedowns?In the world of domain ownership, the need for disputes and enforcement can occur. But how should they be handled? What’s the difference between Uniform Domain-Name Dispute-Resolution Policy (UDRP) domain takeovers and a domain takedown? Let’s take a closer look at the processes.What Is a UDRP Domain Takeover? Established by...
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Active Phishing Campaign: QR Code Attachment O365 Attack

Active Phishing Campaigns are coordinated attacks that Fortra has observed bypassing email security gateways and filtering tools. The following analysis includes examples, high-level details, and associated threat indicators. Sample Email Lure Sender...
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Active Phishing Campaign: Form Assembly Abuse

Active Phishing Campaigns are coordinated attacks that Fortra has observed bypassing email security gateways and filtering tools. The following analysis includes examples, high-level details, and associated threat indicators. To protect the privacy of Fortra’s clients, the brand targeted in this attack has been anonymized and is generically referred to as “Brand” whenever their name appears in the...
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What Are External Security Threats in Cybersecurity?

According to Cybersecurity Ventures, cybercrime would be the world’s third-largest economy (after the U.S. and China) if measured as a country as its damages may total $9.5 trillion globally in 2024. While this may be a surprising stat, it should reiterate the importance of your cybersecurity plan and solutions. External threats play a large part in digital threat landscape, and like the name...
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What Is Tactical Threat Intelligence?

Of the three forms of threat intelligence (strategic, operational, and tactical), tactical threat intelligence is the most directly actionable. Tactical threat intelligence also enables defenders to engage in threat hunting or root cause analysis activities when examining historical (attempted) intrusions. This is useful in detecting breaches that may have occurred, understanding the cause of a previous breach, and understanding whether a particular adversary or TTP is being attempted against your organization.
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Cyberattack Anatomy: Banking Smish

Cyberattack anatomies are a detailed outline of various attack methodologies, techniques, and tactics. This blog post will outline the anatomy of a recent smishing campaign identified by Fortra’s threat researchers. The Smishing Attack The smishing text contains a banking alert about a transaction being put on hold and urges the reader to visit the...
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Active Phishing Campaign: Tax Extension Help Lure

Active Phishing Campaigns are coordinated attacks that Fortra has observed bypassing email security gateways and filtering tools. The following analysis includes examples, high-level details, and associated threat indicators. Sample Email Lure Sender VerificationSender’s Email: ogawa@kidscorp[.]jp Sender’s Name: Beth KolcunReply-To Address: beth...
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Active Phishing Campaign: Yousign HR Lure

A new, sophisticated active phishing campaigns focuses on malicious emails that leverage Yousign e-signature services to carry out phishing attacks. Learn more about this tactic through examples, high-level details, and associated threat indicators.
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Abusing Data to Avoid Detection: Cybercriminal Adoption of Browser Fingerprinting

Browser fingerprinting is one of many tactics phishing site authors use to evade security checks and lengthen the lifespan of malicious campaigns. While browser fingerprinting has been used by legitimate organizations to uniquely identify web browsers for nearly 15 years, it is now commonly exploited by cybercriminals. Today, it is considered widely used for phishing purposes.
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Dark Web Actors Overwhelmingly Target Card Data, Finance in Q4

Credit unions were the top targeted industry on the Dark Web in Q4 2023, continuing its lead over the historically targeted banking industry for the third consecutive quarter. Financials as a whole continue to be a primary focus of criminal groups on underground channels, with more than 91% of malicious activity directed at either credit unions, banks, financial services, or payment services.Every...
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Social Media Attacks Focus on Financials, Executives in Q4

In Q4, impersonation threats made up more than 45% of total attacks on social media, with the vast majority targeting banking and financial services. Impersonation on social media continues to grow, with threats specifically targeting corporate executives responsible for driving the majority of volume for three consecutive quarters.The average number of social media attacks per business has...
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DarkLoader Leads Malware Attacks in Q4

In Q4, three malware families represented more than 93% of all payload volume targeting end users, with Malware-as-a-Service (MaaS) DarkLoader leading all other reports. Fortra first received reports of DarkLoader in user inboxes in Q3, with attack volume picking up significantly beginning in October. The shift to criminal activity associated with DarkLoader comes after coordinated efforts by...
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O365 Volume Up in Q4 as Cybercriminals Target Brands in Credential Theft Attacks

The majority of malicious emails reported in user inboxes contained a link to a phishing site, making credential theft emails the attack method of choice for cybercriminals in Q4. Credential theft made up nearly 60% of all reported incidents, with more than half of the volume attributed to O365 attacks. Despite the threat actor preference toward this threat type, credential theft attacks declined...
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Phishing-as-a-Service Profile: LabHost Threat Actor Group

Fortra is monitoring malicious activity targeting Canadian banks conducted by Phishing-as-a-Service group LabHost. Throughout 2022 and 2023, Fortra has observed phishing attacks connected with Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) groups grow as threat actors use the tools provided through membership services to launch a variety of campaigns. The providers of these platforms boast features such as access...
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How Threat Actors will Leverage Domain Impersonation in 2024

Historically, the average brand is targeted by 40 look-alike domains per month. Look-alikes are a strategic component of malicious lures and websites and used in a variety of spaces including social platforms, text messages, the open web, and email. An attack that incorporates a look-alike domain can mean the difference between a convincing campaign and a suspicious one, with a versatility that...