Callback phishing attacks spike

Callback phishing attacks, or hybridized voice phishing that also includes pre-call emails, have increased by 625% between the first quarter of 2021 and second quarter of 2022 even though overall phishing volumes only rose by 6% during the same period, indicating hackers' evolving techniques in phishing, reports BleepingComputer. Nearly 25% of response-based threats during the second quarter of 2022 were attributed to hybrid vishing attacks, which were initially introduced by the BazarCall or BazaCall campaigns, according to an Agari report. "While this is the second quarter hybrid vishing attacks have declined in share due to the overall increase of response-based threats, vishing volume has steadily increased in count over the course of the year," said Agari. The report also showed that Emotet surpassed QBot as the dominant botnet in phishing campaigns during the second quarter. Meanwhile, financial organizations have been most targeted by phishing attacks, followed by the telecommunications, social media, webmail, e-commerce, and cloud storage/hosting sectors.