Security News > 2020 > November > ThreatList: Pharma Mobile Phishing Attacks Turn to Malware

ThreatList: Pharma Mobile Phishing Attacks Turn to Malware
2020-11-17 21:17

New research shows that 77 percent of pharmaceutical mobile phishing attempts in the third-quarter of 2020 sought to deliver malware on victims' systems.

"On a global scale, there have been multiple reports of foreign adversaries targeting pharmaceutical industry executives with mobile spear phishing attacks," according to Hank Schless, senior manager of security solutions at Lookout wrote on Tuesday in an analysis of the trend.

In the first quarter of 2020, when COVID-19 was surging globally, researchers saw a spike in pharmaceutical mobile phishing rates - from 7.06 percent in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 15.26 percent in Q1 2020.

While previously cybercriminals were relying on phishing attacks that attempted to carry out credential harvesting, in 2020, the aim shifted to malware delivery.

In the first quarter of 2020, only 40 percent of attacks targeted credentials, while 78 percent aimed to deliver malware.


News URL

https://threatpost.com/threatlist-pharma-mobile-phishing-attacks-turn-to-malware/161318/