Google has announced that it has blocked over 1.6 million phishing emails since May 2021, at an average rate of around 10,000 every day. This comes after a huge malware campaign, intent on stealing YouTube accounts and aiding cryptocurrency related scams that has been extremely prevalent in recent months.
According to Google’s Threat Analysis Group and a wide variety of other likeminded organisations, Google’s protections have reduced the volume of phishing emails received in inboxes by a reported 99.6%.
“We blocked 1.6M messages to targets, displayed 62K Safe Browsing phishing page warnings, blocked 2.4K files and successfully restored 4K accounts. With increased detection efforts, we have observed attackers shifting away from Gmail to other email providers (mostly email.cz, seznam.cz, post.cz and aol.com),” Google said in a recent blog post.
“The actors behind this campaign, which we attribute to a group of hackers recruited in a Russian-speaking forum, lure their target with fake collaboration opportunities (typically a demo for antivirus software, VPN, music players, photo editing or online games), hijack their channel, then either sell it to the highest bidder or use it to broadcast cryptocurrency scams,” the company said.
Google shared examples about the specific tactics techniques, and procedures (TTPs) hackers will employ to entice victims into clicking links embedded in phishing emails. Could your employees spot them? Find out in our Free Click-Prone® Test today.
