Washington sources reported that the US cyber security firm FireEye saw Microsoft Office 365-themed phishing attacks increase by 12% over the quarter. Michael Hulton, Vice President and GM of Email Security, FireEye said "Microsoft continues to be the most popular brand utilized in phishing attacks, with 68% of all phishing detection”.
Furthermore a typical phishing email impersonates a well-known contact or trusted company to induce the recipient to click on an embedded link, with the ultimate goal of credential or credit card harvesting. Perhaps attackers are constantly adapting their tactics to get past email security defenses. Report added "Bad actors are following where the money goes, with an arsenal of tools at their disposal and that's why as companies migrate to the cloud, we see more attackers exploiting cloud services to perpetrate their attacks".
Moreover at the FireEye's "Cyber Defence Summita here, the company on Wednesday released its latest email threat update after analyzing more than two billion emails. Reportedly "Some of the most common tactics include hosting Microsoft-themed phishing pages with Microsoft Azure, nesting embedded phish URLs in documents hosted on popular file sharing services, as well as establishing phishing URL redirects on popular email delivery platforms".
