HP's latest Wolf Security Threat Insights Report reveals that cybercriminals are employing "cat-phishing" techniques to deceive victims and using overdue invoice lures and Living-off-the-Land tactics to bypass security defenses, reports SiliconAngle.
Click for more special coverage
The analysis is based on real-world cyberattacks and aims to help organizations stay ahead of evolving threats. Cat-phishing was identified as a primary tactic, where attackers exploit vulnerabilities in legitimate websites, such as open redirects, to manipulate URLs and make them appear trustworthy, leading users to click on links that redirect them to malicious sites without their knowledge.
The report also details a campaign dubbed "Living-off-the-BITS," where attackers abuse the Windows Background Intelligence Transfer Service, a legitimate file transfer mechanism, to download malicious files undetected.
Additionally, HP researchers found that cybercriminals are hiding malware in HTML files disguised as delivery invoices, a technique known as HTML smuggling. Once opened in a browser, these invoices can deploy malware like AsyncRAT.
Further findings indicate that at least 12% of email threats bypass one or more email gateway scanners, with the main threat vectors being email attachments at 53%, browser downloads at 25%, and other infection methods like USB drives and file shares at 22%.
