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Vade Secure published a report on phishing threats in Q4 2019. Researchers identified the 25 most exploited brands by phishing, compiling this list by analyzing multiple phishing URLs.
As a result, WhatsApp ended up in fifth place in the ranking compiled by the researchers with 5,020 unique phishing URLs. This means that the messenger moved up from 63rd to 5th place in the list of the most fake brands used in phishing attacks, showing a meteoric rise of 13,467%.
Vade Secure explains that this is most likely due to a massive campaign to invite users to the so-called Berbagi WhatsApp: a group with pornographic content. Also, according to analysts, the hosting provider 000webhost was hacked and used to host phishing pages.
Also in the top 25 most popular brands among phishers were Facebook, which came in second in the top, and Instagram, which climbed 16 positions to 13. Facebook was used as bait by phishers in 9,795 phishing URLs, and Instagram in 1,401 addresses, which almost doubled the previous quarter's figure and showed an increase of 187.1%.
While the number of phishing attacks associated with Facebook decreased by 18.7% in Q4 2019, this figure grew by 358.8% on an annualized basis. Researchers attribute this to the growing popularity of Facebook Login. For example, having Facebook credentials in hand, phishers can see what other applications the user has logged into using social sign-on, and then compromise those accounts as well.
