Phishing Attacks Continue to Use Attachments as HTML Files Containing Java Dominate
As traditional phishing attack attachment types like Office documents dwindle in use, threat actors look for new effective ways to use email as a delivery medium to launch an attack.
We’ve seen email attachments being used in cyberattacks for decades now, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone working in an office that a strange attachment type may be malicious. And yet, this trend continues, despite threat actors changing which types of attachments to use.
For years, it was macro-enabled Office documents. But once Microsoft made disabling macros the standard, we saw phishing attacks using such files become less and less popular. According to VirusTotal’s Emerging Formats and Delivery Techniques report, email attachments continue to be a popular delivery mechanism for phishing attacks. A few notable specifics from the report include:
- Nearly 45% of malicious attachments were HTML
- Compressed files made up slightly more than 20% of attachments
- PDFs and Javascript files each came in slightly under 10%
- Oddly enough, Word and Excel files still made the list – albeit representing a very small portion of attacks – despite macros being dead for a number of years
Additionally, VirusTotal makes the point that OneNote files as attachments is increasing in popularity this year – something I wrote about earlier this year – due to their ability to embed links to malicious websites.
All in all, malicious attachments don’t appear to be going anywhere. The surefire way to minimize the effectiveness of any of these kinds of attachments is to educate users about the malicious use of these files through security awareness training, teaching them how to spot a suspicious user experience (such as the attachment itself requiring the user to click a link to actually “see” the attachment’s contents) and to stay clear of such files.
Free Phishing Security Test
Would your users fall for convincing phishing attacks? Take the first step now and find out before bad actors do. Plus, see how you stack up against your peers with phishing Industry Benchmarks. The Phish-prone percentage is usually higher than you expect and is great ammo to get budget.
Here’s how it works:
- Immediately start your test for up to 100 users (no need to talk to anyone)
- Select from 20+ languages and customize the phishing test template based on your environment
- Choose the landing page your users see after they click
- Show users which red flags they missed, or a 404 page
- Get a PDF emailed to you in 24 hours with your Phish-prone % and charts to share with management
- See how your organization compares to others in your industry
PS: Don’t like to click on redirected buttons? Cut & Paste this link in your browser: https://info.knowbe4.com/phishing-security-test-partner?partnerid=001a000001lWEoJAAW