Quishing [QR Code Phishing]

Quishing: How to Stop QR Code Phishing Attacks?

QR Code/Quishing attacks continue to escalate through AI-generated, well-crafted emails by embedding malicious links within the code images. This attack leads to credential harvesting links, data theft, and identity theft.

Trustifi, a leader in advanced AI-email security's security operation (SecOps) teams, monitors all attacks against their clients. In 2023, the SecOps team tracked a 250% increase in QR code quishing attacks from July to September alone.

Why is Quishing a Threat To Every Industry?

The FBI reported in September 2023 that threat actors continue to plant (QR) in several public areas, encouraging users to scan for phishing link exploits.

QR code phishing attacks are a newer form of this type of attack that has been increasing in prevalence.

Legitimate businesses, especially ones that handle financial transactions, movie tickets, sporting events, and airlines, will use QR codes requiring a credential login. Hackers and scammers will pose as a lookalike travel site and use the QR code attack for credential harvesting.

Scammers benefit from using QR codes in multiple ways. First, the rogue QR codes help them avoid detection and blocking of emails, even with malware embedded within the image or message. Checking QR code content is complex because most messages have no text or phishing links.

Since the messages have no links, scammers don't need additional accounts or domains to redirect users and hide phishing attempts. To add complexity, organizations use QR codes for legitimate purposes, including inserting the sender's automatic signature.

Most users quickly scan QR codes with smartphones and may overlook the rogue address line of the redirected page on a mobile browser as it could be more noticeable.

• Email phishing escalates through QR Code exploits to unsuspecting users. These AI-generated, well-crafted emails embedded with a code image can cause credential harvesting links, data theft, and identity theft.
• This attack method is rising because the attackers discovered that security solutions don’t scan the QR code in emails/files or follow the redirect link to the final website.
• Preventing any cyber attack, including email phishing, ransomware, and quishing, requires the enablement of several protection capabilities fully integrated into a single platform.

Attempting to stop cyber-attacks, including quishing with legacy email security solutions and standalone devices, will result in user exploits, data exfiltration, and loss of productivity within the organization.

Trustifi AI Detection and Prevention: Built to Stop Quishing Attacks.

Trustifi's advanced AI capabilities deliver exceptional efficiency while leveraging proprietary metrics to detect and quarantine malicious emails, URLs, and files that aim to steal the recipient’s data.

• OCR Scanning for QR Code Detection.
  Trustifi extends OCR scanning for QR codes embedded with their award-winning Inbound shield module. The OCR scanning capability inspects the QR code object, looking for embedded URLs and other rogue-related content already examined by Trustifi AI filtering engines.

  Legacy email security solutions, including secure email gateways, rarely support OCR scanning as part of their security measures.

• AI-Enabled Inbound Filtering Engine Protection.
  AI-enabled email security solutions like Trustifi have several protection filters with anti-evasion, analyzing embedded URLs, and the ability to stop impersonation attacks from the first email phishing attempt.

• Malicious Email Attachment Detection and Prevention.
  Trustifi's advanced AI-enabled inbound shield scans every attachment, looking for key indicators of a QR code attack:

• Does the QR Code URL code contain HTTP or HTTPS prompting the user for a username and password?
• Is the QR code URL domain legitimate or misspelled?
• Is the QR Code redirecting the user to a known phishing site?
• Is the QR code attempting to download malicious malware after the user presses the image?

Trustifi's powerful AI-filtering engine detects these malicious attack methods, preventing these QR codes from performing attacks against their client's devices. Trustifi's AI engines learn over time as more of these types of QR codes morph into new attack vectors. This learning process is the key to Trustifi's continuous success in stopping AI-enabled hacker attacks.

Moving Beyond Just Detection to Prevention, Powered by Trustifi.

Quishing email attacks powered by hacker AI will not go away soon. However, organizations that want to fight "fire with fire" will consider migrating, consolidating, and optimizing their email security, data loss prevention, email encryption, and compliance reporting strategy to Trustifi. With their market-leading AI protection filters, domain impersonation protection, and message encryption, Trustifi simplifies email security while delivering exceptional security protection with their consolidated cloud-based platform.

Stopping next-generation AI-enabled quishing attacks is at the core of Trustifi's expertise in email security. The company's early adoption of AI and machine learning continues to lead the market with greater email protection efficiency and more automated incident response.

Organizations looking to replace their legacy security should look into cloud-based platforms from Trustifi, powered by AI, to protect phishing victims from cyber criminals redirecting users to shady websites, harmful attachments, and scam websites.