Phishing Surged In Q4 2022

According to the “Q4 2022 Phishing and Malware Report” from email security firm Vade, there has been a 61 percent spike in phishing emails in the second half of 2022. Researchers tracked 278.3 million unique phishing emails in the last three months of the year, according to the report. Malware increased as well, with Vade detecting 58.9 million emails that included malware in the fourth quarter. New tools including the AI platform ChatGPT have emerged that can turn amateur hackers into world-class extortionists. One recent enhancement is the ability to automatically localize phishing pages based on a victim’s native language. Hackers can use it to target victims globally without being multilingual. They can also use ChatGPT to produce sophisticated phishing kits via the use of commands that tell the AI tool to write phishing emails and malicious code in seconds. According to an expert quoted in Darkreading, enterprises will have to adopt email security solutions that can respond to more sophisticated tactics, specifically, collaborative and AI-enhanced solutions that can provide “predictive defense against known and unknown threats using the latest threat intelligence and a core set of AI technologies.”