According to Group-IB, this recent string of phishing attacks is one of the most impressive campaigns of this scale to date, with the report concluding that “Oktapus demonstrates how vulnerable modern organizations are to some basic social engineering attacks and how far-reaching the effects of such incidents can be for their partners and customers.”
The magnitude of these risks is unlikely to diminish any time soon. According to Zscaler research, phishing attempts climbed by 29 percent worldwide in 2021 compared to the previous year, with SMS phishing growing faster than other types of frauds as users learned to spot phoney emails. During the COVID-19 epidemic, socially engineered frauds and attacks were also on the rise, and earlier this year, we learned that both Apple and Meta traded data with hackers posing as law enforcement officers.
