TapTechNews reported on May 14th that VIPRE Security Group recently released the 'Email Threat Trends Report' for the first quarter of 2024, which showed that the United States is the largest source of global spam, followed by the United Kingdom and Ireland; however, the United States is also among the top three countries most vulnerable to email attacks, followed by the United Kingdom and Canada.
In terms of attack targets, the manufacturing industry, government departments, and the IT industry are the most susceptible to hacker attacks. In the first quarter of 2024, the manufacturing industry accounted for 43% of email attacks, followed by government departments at 15% and the IT industry at 11%. TapTechNews learned from the report that this data has changed significantly compared to the same period in 2023, when hackers most commonly targeted the financial sector (25%), healthcare (22%), and education (15%) industries.
The security company also stated that many hackers excel at creating phishing emails from human resources departments, claiming to provide employee benefits, compensation, insurance, etc. These emails contain malicious attachments in .html or .pdf format, and unsuspecting users are easily tricked into accessing these fake phishing websites.
In related phishing activities, the security company mentioned that about 75% of emails use links, 24% use attachments, and only 1% use QR codes. Hackers are increasingly fond of placing malicious trojans in cloud storage to reduce costs.