Key findings on email threats
Based on proprietary email threat data and analysis, this report explores the most recent trends in email-based attacks and how attackers are exploiting the ways generative AI can help them.
70%
increase in conversation hijacking since 2022
1 in 20
mailboxes were targeted with QR code attacks in the last quarter of 2023
1 in every 10
attacks were business email compromise (BEC)
40%
of social engineering attacks including a shortened URL used bit.ly
Social engineering attack trends you need to know about.
Barracuda researchers have been tracking five distinct categories of social engineering attacks, analyzing 69 million attacks across 4.5 million mailboxes over 12 months for this report. Their findings show which attack types are increasing and which ones are causing the most damage.
Gmail is used more often in business email compromise
Compared to all social engineering emails analyzed for the report, attacks that leveraged Gmail were signifcantly more skewed toward BEC. Just over 50% of Gmail attacks were used for BEC attacks, compared to 10.6% of all malicious emails.
