AI-Powered Phishing Attacks: How to Protect Email Recipients

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Email users may still remember the days when identifying a phishing email was easy – spelling errors or incredible stories revealed bad actors. Those days are quickly disappearing. With artificial intelligence now a part of the email landscape, hackers have greatly upped their game, and the cyber threats have changed dramatically.

AI phishing emails are not typical spam emails; they are well sophisticated and carefully constructed communications that even the most cautious email security systems may be tricked.

How AI Changes Phishing Attacks

Phishing emails have become more sophisticated because to AI, which can now produce incredibly customized, grammatically perfect, and contextually relevant communications. AI phishing emails are hard to discern because of the powerful capabilities of AI. The following particularities differentiate AI powered phishing emails from the old school ones: 

1. Customization.

AI can scrape public data, corporate websites, social media accounts and generate very well customized emails for a particular recipient audience. Furthermore, spammers can quickly create a very professional fake website or a document using AI to be included in a phishing email in order to convince the victim of the legitimacy of the sender.

2. Timeliness.

An AI-generated phishing email may mention recent corporate news, a recent LinkedIn post, or incorporate other details of current events to create a feel of urgency and push the recipient to act.

3. Impersonation.

With the help of AI, spammers can include a link to a social media post or a blog post published by a trusted person – co-worker, boss, relative, authority etc. – and even imitate the writing style of that person to instill credibility. 

4. Adaptation.

AI phishing emails may alter depending on the recipient’s reaction or the lack of it. The emails that got responses are widely used while the ones that didn’t convert are put aside for future times.

Why AI Phishing Attacks Are So Dangerous

The mentioned features significantly improve the success rate of AI powered phishing emails and present a serious threat to organizations with limited resources to defend against such sophisticated phishing attacks.

For organizations and individuals, the consequences of a successful AI phishing attack might be disastrous. In particular, it might result in:

• Financial losses;
• Loss of private and personal information, company data or intellectual property;
• Loss of client sensitive data;
• Security breaches that result in legal problems and regulatory fines;
• Reputation losses that may take years to repair.

How to Protect Your Brand and Clients from AI Phishing Attacks

AI has already elevated phishing attacks to a more sophisticated level making the life of many organizations and individuals more difficult.

To identify and prevent AI phishing attacks from harming your business, it’s important to follow these best practices:

1. Double Verification.

Always confirm the origin of unexpected requests, particularly when they ask for private data or financial transactions. Unusual requests should be confirmed over a different channel, for example, a phone call. 

Question unexpected messages that arise urgency, warn you about your account expiration, compromisation and suggest to change your personal data now.

Do not click links, load images, or download attachments in the emails coming from unknown sources. If an unexpected message comes from a known sender, try to confirm its legitimacy by contacting the sender by other means.

2. Raise of Security Awareness.

Brans should train their employees to identify phishing emails in order to lower the risk of cyber attacks. At minimum, the following phishing email signals should be watched:

• Unfamiliar or misspelled sender addresses;
• Unexpected or suspicious attachments;
• Urgent call-to-actions;
• Requests for private information;
• Failed SPF and DKIM authentications.

By raising the people’s awareness of the recent cyber threats and phishing assaults, you can boost their skills in identifying AI generated phishing emails and minimize the harm that AI phishing attacks may do to your business.

3. Use of Multi-Factor Authentication.

A multi-factor authentication (MFA) requires one more verification step to access an account or resource. This could be done via a unique code sent at your email address or a text message sent to your phone number. After entering the code, you are allowed to access the resource. 

It’s important to enable the MFA option for your accounts with financial and authority organizations and online services you might be using. Brands offering services with user accounts are encouraged to implement the MFA method to protect their users’ personal data as MFA dramatically lowers the danger of unwanted access by adding an extra layer of user verification.

4. Use of Security Tools.

Many phishing attempts can be detected by web browser tools and extensions, firewalls, email security gateways, email filters, antivirus software, and antimalware tools. 

5. Implementation of Email Authentication Protocols.

Email authentication methods make sure that only authorized senders are using your company’s domain and assist in preventing email spoofing. There are three essential protocols that a company doing email marketing should implement for the sender domain:

Sender Policy Framework (SPF)

Implemented as a TXT DNS record, the SPF record lists the senders allowed to send email messages on behalf of a domain. It’s like a whitelist of senders for a domain.

DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM)

Implemented as a pair of private and public keys, DKIM adds a signature to an outbound email that ensures the message integrity. This authentication method helps senders and receivers know that the message wasn’t altered in transmission and no harmful content was added after the message had left the server.

Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance (DMARC) 

Implemented as a TXT DNS record, DMARC connects SPF and DKIM and allows senders instruct email receivers on how to handle unauthenticated emails: deliver to the recipient, quarantine, or block.

It’s important to publish a DMARC record for all the domains you operate including those ones that are not sending emails. A DMARC record like “v=DMARC1; p=reject;” would protect email users if the domain is compromised.

The DMARC protocol also allows receiving the reports with valuable information about email sources, email messages, and authentication outcomes. This visibility helps domain owners easily identify if a domain spoofing took place. If it did, spam or phishing emails could have been sent from the domain.

As DMARC reports come as XML files, it’s recommended to use automatic tools for processing such reports. GlockApps DMARC Analytics collects aggregate and forensic DMARC reports and presents the data contained in them in a manner that a user can easily understand.

A breakdown by the email sources helps identify malicious senders. If an unknown source generated a huge volume of messages, this might be a signal of the domain spoofing. It’s advised to enforce a DMARC policy to “reject” to block possible phishing emails sent by someone on behalf of your domain.

Conclusion

Phishing attacks will evolve together with AI technology. Being proactive and knowledgeable is essential to safeguarding your brand, reputation, and clients. Regular training, analysis of the recent phishing attacks and cyber threats, implementation of the sophisticated security tools and protocols can mitigate the impact of phishing assaults and secure your private data.

Email marketers are encouraged to utilize monitoring tools to watch their domains’ health, identify email spoofing signals and act on them before the sender’s reputation is seriously compromised.