Rise in LinkedIn Phishing Lures

Industry: N/A | Level: Strategic | Source: CheckPoint

Social Media network has surpassed shipping, retail, and technology as the most targeted category for phishing. Previous campaigns have involved the usage of delivery tracking emails as lures however, the abuse with LinkedIn has accounted for over half (52%) of phishing emails based on CheckPoint's research for the first quarter of 2022. The change in theme was quite dramatic as in the previous quarter, the LinkedIn theme was only utilized for 8% of phishing attempts. Threat actors appear to be leveraging the LinkedIn lures to obtain user credentials to the social media platform. Shipping companies are still a prominent abuse category, whilst in second place the timing to abuse victims remains rich to take advantage of e-commerce sales. The list of the 10 most abused brands of Q1 2022 by CheckPoint based on their usage is as follows LinkedIn (52%), DHL (14%), Google (7%), Microsoft (6%), FedEx (6%), WhatsApp (4%), Amazon (2%). Maersk (1%), AliExpress (0.8%) and Apple (0.8%).