7 Phishing Attacks That Could Hook Your Users

Phishing attacks are growing more sophisticated, making them difficult to detect—even for the most vigilant employees. Today’s cybercriminals are leveraging tools like artificial intelligence (AI) to create sophisticated, hard-to-spot phishing messages. Unfortunately, just one misstep by a careless employee can trigger serious consequences for businesses, including data breaches, financial losses and operational downtime. Here’s a look at the latest phishing tricks IT professionals need to watch out for.

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Phishing is still the leading cyberthreat to businesses, but it has evolved
Phishing is the most common cyberthreat that businesses face. Phishing scammers use sophisticated social engineering tactics to exploit emotions like trust, fear and urgency to spur the victim into sharing sensitive information, passwords, credit card numbers or personal details. Phishing attacks can occur in a wide variety of formats, including these seven common varieties.
Email phishing: This is the most common form of phishing, accounting for 65% of all phishing attempts. Attackers send fraudulent emails that often include links to fake websites designed to capture login credentials or distribute malware. Key traits include generic greetings, urgent language, unexpected attachments and strange formatting. Traditionally, spelling and grammar mistakes were hallmarks of email phishing. However, the widespread adoption of generative AI by bad actors has made this less common.
Smishing (SMS Phishing): Phishing via SMS or text messages, where attackers send messages that look like they’re from legitimate sources, is designed to lure recipients into clicking malicious links or revealing private information.

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Vishing (Voice Phishing): Phishing conducted over phone calls, where attackers impersonate trusted figures (e.g., tech support, bank representatives) to coerce individuals into providing sensitive data.
Chatbot phishing: This up-and-coming form of phishing uses fake automated chatbots to impersonate customer support, tricking users into revealing sensitive information or clicking malicious links. This tactic exploits trust in real-time support systems, making scams appear more credible.

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Common types of email phishing
Phishing is the most common cyberattack that businesses face. In our Kaseya Cybersecurity Survey Report 2024, we revealed that 68% of respondents said that they anticipate at least one phishing attack on their organization in the next 12 months.
Defending against phishing is extremely challenging because it constantly evolves. Here are some typical forms of email phishing that employees may encounter:
- Spear phishing: This is the most strategic form of phishing. Unlike general phishing, spear phishing messages are precisely targeted. They are highly customized, using personalized details to appear convincing, making them harder to detect and more likely to succeed. The University of Florida notes that spear phishing causes over 60% of all breaches.
Key features: Meticulous targeting’ narrow victim pool, sophisticated look and feel.
- Brand impersonation: Attackers mimic trusted brands to create phishing emails or fake websites that trick users into submitting sensitive information. Data from the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shows that Best Buy/Geek Squad, Amazon and PayPal are the companies scammers impersonate most often.
Key features: Exact replication of a well-known company’s branding, style or logos; slightly altered URLs; unexpected account-related requests from major brands.
- Business email compromise: This scam grows dramatically every year and involves attackers impersonating executives, suppliers, officials or trusted colleagues to trick carefully selected employees into transferring money or sharing sensitive information using email spoofing and social engineering tactics.
Key features: Unexpected invoices or bills; unusual requests for money or payment; messages that direct the recipient to make a payment in an abnormal way. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) declared that reported BEC losses are up nearly 58% since 2020.
- Ransomware-infected phishing: Phishing emails that deliver ransomware, often by enticing victims to click on malicious links or download infected attachments. Cybersecurity Ventures expects ransomware damage costs to exceed $265 billion annually by 2031.

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Key features: Unexpected attachments; urgent or threatening language to provoke action; mimicking a legitimate source.
- Conversation hijacking: In these scenarios, attackers infiltrate legitimate email threads, leveraging social engineering to masquerade as a trusted source to request sensitive information or redirect payments.
Key features: The unexpected resumption of an ongoing conversation; old email chains coming back to life; unexpected changes of direction in established email chains.
- Whaling: This type of spear phishing targets high-level executives with highly customized emails to gain sensitive information or authorize fraudulent transactions. Senior-level employees are almost twice as likely to fall for phishing attempts than entry-level employees.
Key features: High-level targeting, impersonating a colleague; focus on sensitive or financial data; sophisticated and personalized.
- Clone phishing: In this devious scheme, attackers recreate a legitimate email that the victim has already received. The attacker then replaces trusted links or attachments with malicious ones, making the email appear as though it’s a resend of a legitimate message.
Key features: A near-identical copy of a legitimate email the victim has already received; structural changes like modified or replaced links, attachments or content.
Proactive phishing protection is crucial for defending businesses against today’s cyberthreats and preparing them for future challenges. Implementing advanced anti-phishing measures ensures long-term resilience, helping organizations stay ahead of evolving tactics and maintain a secure environment.
Graphus and BullPhish ID are the perfect combination of solutions to help you control phishing risk
With Graphus and BullPhish ID you can easily build an effective layered defense against phishing by combining AI tools with security awareness training and phishing simulations.
BullPhish ID provides a comprehensive solution for effective and affordable security awareness training, including customizable phishing simulation, making it easy to educate employees on how to recognize and handle cyberthreats.
- Access a wide range of professionally created and regularly updated training materials in multiple languages.
- Customize phishing kits or create your own to target specific threats.
- Save IT resources with features like directory sync, intuitive campaign management, and automated reporting.
- Track progress with automated reports that demonstrate the value of security awareness training.
- Upload and deliver custom training content, such as onboarding or compliance courses.
Graphus is an AI-driven anti-phishing solution that safeguards employee inboxes from email-based cyberthreats, including ransomware, BEC and zero day attacks, using patented AI technology. It automatically detects and mitigates phishing threats before they can cause harm.
- Automatically quarantine suspicious emails, allowing IT teams to review and act promptly.
- Empower users with our proprietary Employee Shield™ warning banner, making it simple to identify and report suspicious emails in one click.
- Reduce IT team workload with smart alerting that filters out unnecessary notifications.
- Deploy effortlessly with a fast, API-based setup — no complex configurations required.
- Manage email threats with ease using an intuitive admin portal that delivers clear insights for stronger security.
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