Phishing attacks increased in the first half of this year, with many campaigns spoofing webmail and software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers, a recent APWG report[pdf] shows. The number of detected phishing campaigns surged from 138,328 in Q4 of 2018 to 180,768 in Q1 of 2019 and then grew further to 182,465 in Q2 of this year.
Almost two in three (65%) business email compromise (BEC) scams detected in the second quarter of 2019 involved requests to victims to send gift cards, while other BEC campaigns relied on requests for payroll diversions (20%) and requests for direct bank transfers (15%).
Read more: Phishing attacks up, especially against SaaS and webmail services
