Who Gets Targeted Most in Cyberattack Campaigns

Attackers are changing both their tactics and targets in an attempt to remain criminally successful, Proofpoint's study found.

Dark Reading Staff, Dark Reading

April 23, 2019

1 Min Read
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A low-level, non-executive title is no defense against spear-phishing campaigns, a new report has found.

Attackers are finding success with old tactics used against new targets: R&D and engineering staff tend to be more frequently targeted than employees in other departments, and individual engineers and developers are targeted at a higher rate than executives, according to Proofpoint's quarterly analysis of highly targeted cyberattacks.

The fastest growing category of attacked addresses, though, were generic functional accounts like "[email protected]" or "[email protected]". Those generic addresses accounted for roughly 30% of all email attacks tracked in the fourth quarter of 2018.

Criminals aren't limiting themselves to email attacks, either: Web-based social engineering groups grew 150% over the previous quarter and fraudulent social media support account phishing was up 442% over the previous year.

For more, read here.

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Dark Reading Staff

Dark Reading

Dark Reading is a leading cybersecurity media site.

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