Microsoft was impersonated in 36% of all (brand) display name impersonation attacks in the third quarter. Amazon was the second most commonly impersonated company, used in 27% of these attacks. The pattern was different for high-value targets, such as C-suite executives—Microsoft was impersonated in 71% of these attacks. Dropbox is a distant second at seven percent, followed by United Parcel Service (UPS) at 6%.
These attacks often take the form of service updates, security alerts and password resets. Agari’s new report reveals that 62% of advanced email attacks leverage display name deception: 54% impersonate trusted brands and 8% impersonate individuals. On the other end of the spectrum, 3% of identity deception-based attacks are sent from compromised email accounts commandeered through account takeover (ATO) attacks.
To learn more, download Agari’s newly-published quarterly report “Email Fraud & Identity Deception Trends: Insights from the Agari Identity Graph”.
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