The Security Skeptic

Interisle's Phishing Landscape 2024 is here

Our Interisle team today announced the publication of an industry report, Phishing Landscape 2024, A Study of the Scope and Distribution of Phishing.

Interisle’s fourth annual study examines nearly four million phishing reports collected from May 2023 to April 2024 and provides historical measurements using over 15 million phishing reports collected at the Cybercrime Information Center over a four year period.

Findings from the study:

• The total number of phishing attacks grew to ~1.9 million incidents worldwide.

• Phishing attacks hosted at subdomain providers increased by 450,000+ reported names, representing 24% of all phishing attacks.

• The use of the decentralized InterPlanetary File System to host and launch phishing attacks also increased 1,300%.

• After the demise of the phish-friendly Freenom, cybercriminals moved to using inexpensive domain names in new gTLDs. 42% of all domains reported for phishing were registered in new gTLDs, compared to 25% last year.

• The registration of high volumes of domain names at one time (bulk registration) accounts for 27% of all domain names used in phishing attacks.

• Four of the top five hosting providers used by phishers to host phishing attacks were based in the United States.

• Domain name registration policies significantly affect the level of phishing in a TLD. Robust customer verification requirements adopted by ccTLDs in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region correlate with lower levels of phishing activity.

Phishing is a global threat. Fighting it effectively will require worldwide policy and legislative attention, the cooperation of domain name registries and registrars, Internet and web hosting service providers, and national and international government agencies. Interisle offers several measures to disrupt the phishing supply chain and effectively remediate phishing attacks, including adoption of digital identity verification services, delayed delegation of suspicious names, and trusted reporter programs.

URL: See https://interisle.squarespace.com/s/PhishingLandscape2024.pdfhttps://lnkd.in/e8mp6-v7

Press release: https://www.einpresswire.com/article/728920327/interisle-study-reveals-phishers-have-expanded-their-supply-chain-to-target-more-usershttps://lnkd.in/epetF7U2

Cybercrime supply chain interviews with Spamhaus Team

The Spamhaus team recently interviewed me to learn more about Interisle's recent study, Cybercrime Supply Chain 2023, where we examine the supply chains used by cybercriminals to acquire resources for malware, spam, and phishing attacks. 

In Trends, policy and cheap TLDs - an interview with Dave Piscitello (Part 1), we dive into some of the study's key findings:

• Nearly 5 million domain names identified as resources for cybercrime.

• Over 1 million new gTLD domain names reported for spam activity.

• Over 500,000 subdomain hostnames reported as cybercrime resources at 229 subdomain resellers.

• The United States, China, India, Australia, and Hong Kong had the most IPv4 addresses used for cybercrime.

In Registration, collaboration and disruption - an interview with Dave Piscitello (Part 2), we look at how criminals exploit domain registration services.  Here, I explain why adopting the well-known strategy of disrupting supply lines can be effective in mitigating cybercrime. This recommendation is the most recent effort to decry the weaponization of domain names and call for government to impose obligations to mitigate this threat.

I've long recommended that domains registered by cybercriminals, by the thousands, in seconds, is _the_ most serious registration threat (read Weaponizing Domain Names: how bulk registration aids global spam campaigns). Crimes that exploit bulk domain registration services are racking up billions in losses or disrupting healthcare and other critical services. Just as governments have imposed limits on purchases of pseudoephedrine to limit the manufacture of methamphetamine and on ammonium nitrate to prevent the construction of improvised explosive devices, so too can they impose measures to protect the public against cybercrimes, cyberattacks, or cyberterrorism. Such measures will disrupt the criminals' supply chain.