As email security providers strengthen their defenses, attackers develop new ways to work around them. A new report from Inky sheds light on how these techniques are evolving to become more complex and difficult to detect by unsuspecting targets.
"They're clearly testing those systems, and then they're exploring ways to get through," says Inky co-founder Dave Baggett of email security defenses. Today's adversaries are looking for ways to hide from legacy protection systems while avoiding suspicion from users, he adds.
One of the strategies Inky highlights is the use of hidden text and zero-font attacks to disguise malicious emails from security software. Someone may use an Office 365 logo to make a phish appear legitimate; the problem is, this would likely trigger defenses to see whether the email came from a Microsoft domain. Adding hidden text in the logo can confuse defensive tools.