Security News > 2022 > June > Phishing reaches all-time high in early 2022

The APWG's Phishing Activity Trends Report reveals that in the first quarter of 2022 there were 1,025,968 total phishing attacks-the worst quarter for phishing observed to date.

In the first quarter of 2022, OpSec Security reported that phishing attacks against the financial sector, which includes banks, remained the largest set of attacks, accounting for 23.6 percent of all phishing.

Attacks against webmail and software-as-a-service providers remained prevalent as well, while attacks against retail/ecommerce sites fell from 17.3 to 14.6 percent after the holiday shopping season.

Phishing against social media services rose markedly, from 8.5 percent of all attacks in 4Q2021 to 12.5 percent in 1Q2022.

Phishing against cryptocurrency targets-such as cryptocurrency exchanges and wallet providers-inched up from 6.5 in the previous quarter to 6.6 percent of attacks.

John LaCour, Principal Product Strategist at PhishLabs by HelpSystems, said that "In the first quarter of 2022, we observed a 7 percent increase in credential theft phishing against enterprise users, up to nearly 59 percent of all malicious emails." LaCour also noted that impersonation attacks were 47 percent of social media threats, up from 27 percent the prior quarter.

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https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2022/06/15/2022-total-phishing-attacks/