Connect with us

Hi, what are you looking for?

SecurityWeekSecurityWeek

Application Security

Report: Supplier Impersonation Attacks a Major Risk

Threat actors are leveraging the supply chain to deliver various types of threats to organizations, and few of them are spared from such attacks, according to a new report from enterprise security company Proofpoint.

Threat actors are leveraging the supply chain to deliver various types of threats to organizations, and few of them are spared from such attacks, according to a new report from enterprise security company Proofpoint.

During a seven-day window in February 2021, out of a total of 3,000 monitored organizations, Proofpoint reports that a whopping 98 percent were hit with a form of assault leveraging compromised supplier accounts and supplier impersonation.

Such attacks, Proofpoint explains, leverage compromised supplier domains to deliver a broad range of threats, including invoicing fraud, phishing messages aimed at credential harvesting, malware, and business email compromise (BEC).

Of the observed attacks relying on impersonated and compromised suppliers, 74% leveraged social engineering for phishing or BEC and less than 30% of them were malware related. This shows that attackers continue to exploit the human element rather than vulnerabilities in an organization’s infrastructure.

“As well, attackers are following suppliers to the cloud and are exploiting popular collaboration platforms such as Microsoft 365, Google G-Suite, and Dropbox to host or send threats at an alarming rate,” according to the Proofpoint report.

Impostor threats, which include domain and display name spoofing, along with lookalike domains, account for only 3 percent of the total attacks delivered through supplier domains. Such threats are tailored to target only very few people within an organization.

[Upcoming Webinar: Preventing Novel BEC Attacks: Lessons Learned and Best Practices w/ the FBI]

Despite being low volume, these highly targeted attacks often result in high losses. According to the FBI, BEC and email account compromise (EAC) scams incurred losses in excess of $1.8 billion in 2020.

Advertisement. Scroll to continue reading.

Large organizations, Proofpoint reveals, are targeted the most when it comes to threats served from supplier domains. Compared to the average, F1000 companies receive emails from twice as many supplier domains, thus are more exposed to impersonated and compromised suppliers. These organizations receive more than 4 times more threats served from supplier domains than the average.

More than 98% of organizations in the financial services, manufacturing, utilities, communications, transportation, wholesale trade, and construction were targeted from supplier domains, with the trend consistent across organizations based in the United States, Australia, and the United Kingdom.

Related: DAIC: A Suggested System for Preventing BEC Fraud

Related: Russian BEC Ring Targets Many Multinational Organizations

Written By

Ionut Arghire is an international correspondent for SecurityWeek.

Click to comment

Trending

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 the session as we discuss the challenges and best practices for cybersecurity leaders managing cloud identities.

Register

SecurityWeek’s Ransomware Resilience and Recovery Summit helps businesses to plan, prepare, and recover from a ransomware incident.

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.

Vulnerabilities

Less than a week after announcing that it would suspended service indefinitely due to a conflict with an (at the time) unnamed security researcher...

Cybercrime

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

Cybercrime

A recently disclosed vBulletin vulnerability, which had a zero-day status for roughly two days last week, was exploited in a hacker attack targeting the...

Identity & Access

Zero trust is not a replacement for identity and access management (IAM), but is the extension of IAM principles from people to everyone and...

Data Breaches

OpenAI has confirmed a ChatGPT data breach on the same day a security firm reported seeing the use of a component affected by an...

IoT Security

A group of seven security researchers have discovered numerous vulnerabilities in vehicles from 16 car makers, including bugs that allowed them to control car...

Vulnerabilities

A researcher at IOActive discovered that home security systems from SimpliSafe are plagued by a vulnerability that allows tech savvy burglars to remotely disable...