Security News > 2020 > March > Trump, Sanders Are the Top Brands for Cybercriminals

Unwanted and malicious emails using political-themed lures has spiked as the presidential primary season cranks into high gear - with Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders representing the lion's share of subject line themes.

"Overall UCE volumes mentioning individual candidates suggests that Donald Trump not only has the incumbent's advantage but also maintains the strongest brand as he did in 2016," researchers said in a posting issued on Super Tuesday.

Democratic front-runners during the analysis period, including Joe Biden, Michael Bloomberg, Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, all had ebbs and flows in their presence in UCE, depending on how their campaigns were doing.

"Polarizing brands simply give illicit email actors more fodder for subject lines in emails that may lead to anything from affiliate spam landing pages unrelated to the presidential campaign to attack or misinformation sites."

As for the Democrats, "Unlike illicit email volumes, in which Sanders-related email subjects were within a few percentage points of other top Democratic candidates, Sanders-related domains made up over a quarter of new suspicious domains," Proofpoint researchers wrote.

News URL

https://threatpost.com/trump-sanders-top-brands-cybercriminals/153451/