Businesses in Australia and the APAC area have been warned that cyber criminals are using well-known platforms like Atlassian to build more convincing phishing attacks on regulation companies and other businesses. These episodes aim to breach the safety of the company by stealing employee credentials.

According to Ryan Economos, APAC area chief technology officer at Mimecast, for phishing attacks are uncommon in their use of Atlassian as a handle. However, he noted that thanks to hacking packages and AI, which make it simpler for cyber criminals to carry out their activities, phishing attacks are becoming more advanced.

Atlassian offices, Chinese Companies, and a compliance support history

The development of a new spoofing technique that used a conformity update protect story to pin law firm employees was covered in Mimecast’s International Threat Intelligence Report 2024 H1. The phishing assaults:

  • Leveraged favorite regional model Atlassian’s workspaces, as well as other consolidated workspace platforms, including Archbee and Nuclino, to give employees dangerous emails that looked familiar and reasonable.
  • Employed machine compliance updates as a cover, sending employees emails to inform them how to upgrade their devices to stay cooperative with company policies.
  • Were intended to direct those who clicked the link to a fictitious company site where hackers may obtain qualifications and other sensitive data.
  • incorporated the phishing connection in an email sent from a list of Chinese Companies.

According to Mimecast’s report, there is a significant amount of personalization in the emails, including details of a “device” and many references to the business domain they are sending these campaigns in order to boost validity.

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” The target organization’s domain name is always used in the sender address, with the intention of deceiving end consumers into thinking it belongs to their inner department.”

The style of phishing attacks is increasing.

Economos noted that the campaign started out with American law firms, but it has since expanded to additional sectors and is no longer just the legal field. He cited some elements of the plan that suggest threat actors are becoming more sophisticated.

Usage of Atlassian and another offices

Economos claimed that the growing use of Atlassian offices was a relatively recent development for the business.

Concern stars still make use of services like OneDrive and Google Docs to sponsor files or links in their efforts, according to him, but Atlassian’s use of workspaces has not previously been extensively abused.

Part of the campaign was an email that appeared to be from Atlassian’s Confluence solution. In recent years, Mimecast mentioned a “noticeable raise in the use of Atlassian” to escape detection.

” Abuses of reputable companies is an ongoing and growing challenge”, Economos said. In an effort to avoid being discovered, attackers will continue to use reputable sources to build and host their campaigns.

View: Australia’s alarming rate of data breaches in 2024.

Harvesting of sensor data knowledge

The plan redirected customers to the unified desk solutions using postmark URLs. Postmark URLs make it easier for hackers to obtain location, website details, and which section of the message was clicked, enabling them to use this knowledge to make the phishing lure more compelling.

Multiple URL subterfuge practices

The phishing plan employed “multiple obfuscation techniques,” according to Mimecast, making it more difficult for users to determine the URL’s correct destination. This includes many redirections within the URL, encoded heroes, and the insertion of tracking guidelines.

enlisting hapless Japanese Companies

Economos noted that Chinese ISPs were used once more in this hacking campaign, as they had in previous attacks.

He continued,” It continues to introduce the lengths that danger players will go to to successfully carry out attacks on organizations.”

Phishing attacks may find easier to install — and more convincing

Phishing is still among the most popular computer challenges among companies, Economos said.

Generative AI and machine learning are anticipated to increase the elegance and strengthen the targeting and articles of phishing campaigns while also aiding defenders in stopping attacks. This will make supporters more and more likely to recognize and respond to novel attack strategies.

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” The biggest evolution has been the speed and precision of phishing challenges, through the use of phishing products, technology, and AI-based systems”, Economos said. These platforms give yet low-level attackers the ability to launch large-scale campaigns and to quickly create more compelling phishing emails to evade detection using conventional security measures.

Economos also noted the increase of company email compromise as well as the rise of pretexting, which is the practice of a cyber criminal who does research and pretend to be a character to con a phishing victim in order to entice them to use a compelling story or “pretext.”

Concern actors are diversifying the vector they use as our work areas continue to expand, including email, social media platforms, engagement tools like Microsoft Teams, Slack, and OneDrive, as well as smishing and spoofing attacks using telephone calls or text messages to deceive victims, he said.