Security Experts:

Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Cybercrime

Number of Phishing Sites Using HTTPS Soars

The number of phishing websites using HTTPS has increased considerably over the past few months since Firefox and Chrome have started warning users when they access login pages that are not secure.

The number of phishing websites using HTTPS has increased considerably over the past few months since Firefox and Chrome have started warning users when they access login pages that are not secure.

Internet security services firm Netcraft reported on Wednesday that, since late January, the proportion of phishing sites using HTTPS increased from roughly 5% to 15%.

One explanation for the rise is that, in late January, both Google and Mozilla implemented HTTP warnings in their Chrome and Firefox web browsers in an effort to protect their customers against man-in-the-middle (MitM) attacks.

Users of Chrome 56 and later, and Firefox 51 and later are warned when they are about to enter their credentials on a login page that does not use HTTPS. Since most phishing sites had been served over HTTP connections, cybercriminals may have realized that they need to step up their game and move to HTTPS.

“If the new browser behaviour has driven this change — and the timing suggests it might have — then it may have also had the unintended side effect of increasing the efficacy of some phishing sites,” explained Netcraft’s Paul Mutton. “Phishing sites that now use HTTPS and valid third-party certificates can appear more legitimate, and therefore increase the likelihood of snaring a victim.”

Phishing sites using HTTPS

Another possible explanation, according to the expert, is that the warnings introduced by Google and Mozilla encouraged website administrators to migrate to HTTPS. Since phishing pages are often hosted on legitimate sites that have been compromised, this may have also been a factor in the significant increase of phishing sites using HTTPS.

On the other hand, Mutton pointed out that some popular browsers, such as Microsoft’s Edge and Internet Explorer, don’t display any warnings for login pages, which means phishing sites served over HTTP will still be efficient in many cases.

Cybercriminals have been coming up with clever ways to phish users’ credentials. One recent campaign aimed at Google customers leveraged a fake Google Docs application. Google quickly killed the operation, but the incident showed that malicious actors continue to improve their methods.

Related Reading: Cybercriminals Use New Tricks in Phishing Attacks

Related Reading: Google Tightens OAuth Rules to Combat Phishing

Related Reading: Tracking Pixels Used in Phishing Campaigns

Written By

Eduard Kovacs (@EduardKovacs) is a contributing editor at SecurityWeek. He worked as a high school IT teacher for two years before starting a career in journalism as Softpedia’s security news reporter. Eduard holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial informatics and a master’s degree in computer techniques applied in electrical engineering.

Click to comment

Daily Briefing Newsletter

Subscribe to the SecurityWeek Email Briefing to stay informed on the latest threats, trends, and technology, along with insightful columns from industry experts.

Join this webinar to learn best practices that organizations can use to improve both their resilience to new threats and their response times to incidents.

Register

Join this live webinar as we explore the potential security threats that can arise when third parties are granted access to a sensitive data or systems.

Register

Expert Insights

Related Content

Application Security

Cycode, a startup that provides solutions for protecting software source code, emerged from stealth mode on Tuesday with $4.6 million in seed funding.

Cybercrime

Zendesk is informing customers about a data breach that started with an SMS phishing campaign targeting the company’s employees.

Cybercrime

Satellite TV giant Dish Network confirmed that a recent outage was the result of a cyberattack and admitted that data was stolen.

Data Protection

The CRYSTALS-Kyber public-key encryption and key encapsulation mechanism recommended by NIST for post-quantum cryptography has been broken using AI combined with side channel attacks.

Cybercrime

The release of OpenAI’s ChatGPT in late 2022 has demonstrated the potential of AI for both good and bad.

Data Protection

The cryptopocalypse is the point at which quantum computing becomes powerful enough to use Shor’s algorithm to crack PKI encryption.

Cybercrime

The changing nature of what we still generally call ransomware will continue through 2023, driven by three primary conditions.

Application Security

PayPal is alerting roughly 35,000 individuals that their accounts have been targeted in a credential stuffing campaign.