NEWS
Barracuda research finds one in five HTML email attachments found to be malicious
as they ’ re commonly used for system generated reports , updates and notifications . They often include hyperlinks which users have become accustomed to clicking without first checking to see the full URL ,” said Toni El Inati , RVP Sales , META and CEE , Barracuda Networks .
“ It ’ s no surprise then that attackers have been quick to exploit this trust . Moreover , these attachments mean that attackers no longer need to place malicious links in the body of the email and therefore allow them to bypass traditional anti-spam and anti-virus policies with ease .”
New research conducted by Barracuda
Networks , a leading provider of cloudfirst security solutions , has found that HTML attachments are by far the most used by cybercriminals for malicious purposes .
The company ’ s analysis of millions of email attachments over the past month revealed that one in five HTML attachments were malicious . By comparison , a meagre 0.03 % and 0.009 % of MS Office and PDF files respectively that were sent via the scanned emails were found to be malicious .
“ HTML attachments have become ubiquitous in email communications
In analysing the modus-operandi of the cybercriminals perpetrating these attacks , Barracuda ’ s experts found credential phishing and malware to be primarily motives . The research revealed that attackers commonly embed links to phishing or malicious websites within their HTML attachments .
Cloudflare launches new threat operations and research team Cloudforce One
Cloudflare has launched Cloudforce One , a new threat operations and research team .
Cloudforce One will publish research and track and disrupt threat actors . The team comprises analysts assigned to threat research , malware and vulnerability research , and threat operations – to disrupt actors once identified .
Blake Darché , Head of Threat Intelligence at Cloudflare , said : “ First and foremost , the team will help protect all Cloudflare customers by working closely with our existing product , engineering and security teams to improve our products based on tactics , techniques and procedures ( TTPs ) observed in the wild .
“ Customers will get better protection without having to take any action , and will be able to read a subset of research published on our blog and within the Cloudflare Security Center .
“ Additionally , enterprise customers who wish to receive one-on-one live briefings from the team , submit periodic inquiries for follow-up , and obtain early access to threat research , will soon be able to sign up for our new Threat Intelligence subscription . All other enterprise customers will be invited to join periodic group briefings .
“ Lastly , new capabilities within Security Center , such as access to historical threat data via API and threat pivoting features , will also be introduced by the dedicated threat intel engineering team paired with Cloudforce One .” p
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