Vade Releases 2023 Phishers’ Favorites Report
Vade’s annual phishing report reveals that Facebook scams reached all-time high and social media phishing rose sharply
February 14, 2024 – San Francisco, Calif. – Vade, the global leader in email cybersecurity with more than 1.4 billion mailboxes protected, today announced its annual Phishers’ Favorites report for 2023. Phishers’ Favorites Year-in-Review is a ranking of the top 20 most impersonated brands in phishing. Headlining this year’s report, Facebook was the most impersonated brand after a 74% year-over-year (YoY) increase in unique phishing websites, more than double the runner up on this year’s list, Microsoft. This marks a record number of phishing websites for the social media company and the third consecutive year it claimed the top spot.
Phishers’ Favorites 2023 Year-in-Review, which can be read in full here, analyzes full-year phishing data captured by Vade’s technology. For this report, Vade analyzed 197,000 phishing pages linked from unique phishing emails between January 1, 2023 and December 31, 2023.
Social media phishing reaches increases significantly
Among all industries, the social media sector accounted for the largest YoY increase in phishing URLs at 110%. Aside from Facebook, Instagram (#9 on this year’s list), WhatsApp (#13), and LinkedIn (#23) all contributed to the increase. The rise in phishing threats comes as revenues from social media advertising continue to climb and businesses step up their reliance on these platforms for sales, marketing, and recruiting.
The financial services industry remains the most impersonated
2023 proved to be another typical year for financial services, with the industry retaining its status as the most impersonated by hackers. The sector led all others in terms of total unique phishing URLs (64,009 or 32% of the overall total). From the financial services sector, Crédit Agricole, SoftBank, Paypal, and Bank of America all made the top 10, followed by La Banque Postale, Société Générale, and American Express.
Microsoft, Google, and Netflix lead cloud brands spoofed in phishing attacks
Along with social media, the cloud industry was the only other sector to see an increase in unique phishing URLs in 2023. That was largely due to Microsoft (#2), Google (#11), and Netflix (#19). Microsoft’s and Google’s sustained popularity among hackers follows growing demand for their productivity suite platforms, Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace, respectively. This year, Microsoft announced it reached more than 382 million paid seats in Q3 2023. Meanwhile, Google announced that more than 9 million organizations pay for Google Workspace. Both product suites remain popular targets for phishing attacks.
Additional key findings from the Phishers’ Favorites 2023 report include:
- Hackers are abusing legitimate services to bypass detection by email security solutions.
- Quishing attacks are on the rise and demonstrating emerging techniques.
- Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) marketplaces are flourishing.
Read the full report at vadesecure.com.
About Vade
Vade is a global cybersecurity company that secures human collaboration with a combination of AI and human-powered detection and response. Vade’s products and solutions protect consumers, businesses, and organizations from email-borne cyberattacks, including malware/ransomware, spear phishing/business email compromise, and phishing.
Vade is a fast-growing, channel-first company with a growing network of MSP and MSSP partners, as well as distribution agreements with leading distributors and aggregators in North America, EMEA, and Asia. Founded in 2009, Vade protects more than 1.4 billion corporate and consumer mailboxes and serves the ISP, SMB, and MSP markets with award-winning products and solutions that help increase cybersecurity and maximize IT efficiency.
To learn more, please visit www.vadesecure.com and follow us on Twitter @vadesecure or LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/company/vade-secure/.
