Security News > 2024 > February > QR code attacks target organizations in ways they least expect

QR code attacks are the latest evolution of traditional phishing, where threat actors use social engineering to manipulate targets into interacting with malicious QR codes.

While every employee is at risk, C-Suite executives were 42 times more likely to receive QR code attacks than the average employee.

In the research report, Abnormal also identified key themes that cybercriminals are using to execute QR code phishing attacks.

The most popular are related to multi-factor authentication and access to shared documents-approaches that accounted for 27% and 21% of all QR code attacks respectively.

Organizations of all sizes are at risk-even organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees have a 70% probability of receiving at least one BEC attack per week.

Britton continued, "Today's organizations are feeling the pressure of advanced attacks-both with the rise of emerging tactics like malicious QR codes, and with the continued growth of socially-engineered BEC and VEC attacks. These threats are not only increasing but constantly evolving, targeting organizations and their employees in ways they least expect. Unfortunately, security awareness training is not enough, as these tactics are evolving faster and cybercriminals are finding new methods to prey on human behavior. As such, it's more important than ever for security leaders to equip their organizations with the most advanced and adaptive threat detection tools to keep pace with, and stay ahead of, modern cybercrime."

News URL

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2024/02/13/qr-codes-malicious-tactic/