Crédit Agricole, Société Générale, La Banque Postale… If these banking establishments seem, a priori, to have only their services in common, they also appear on the list of companies most affected by phishing, according to the annual report of cybersecurity company Vade published on February 14. This technique consists of obtaining, often via a legitimate-looking email, that the recipient transmits their banking details or connection details to financial services.
In total, six French brands are among the 20 most frequently spoofed in 2023. Crédit Agricole is even in third place, with 11,668 unique phishing URLs (site addresses). Orange ranks 4th, La Banque Postale in 12th, SFR in 15th, OVH in 17th, and Société Générale in 18th.
In pole position is Facebook, for the third year in a row, with 44,548 URLs. phishing. For the social network, this constitutes a record increase of 74% in one year, according to the study. Facebook spoofs account for almost a quarter (23%) of all phishing URLs.
Social media scams jumped 110%
Social media remains the sector that has seen the strongest annual growth in the number of URLs phishingwith a jump of 110% in 2023. Instagram (10th), WhatsApp (13th) and LinkedIn (23rd) contributed to this increase.
“This multiplication of threats of phishing comes as advertising revenues for these networks continue to rise and companies rely more and more on them to sell their products and services, broadcast their marketing campaigns and recruit talent,” the report highlights.
In second place in the ranking, Microsoft saw its identity stolen by 22,851 unique URLs (or 12% of the total). The services of cloud or streaming are also frequently targeted by this type of attack: Google and Netflix rank 11th and 19th respectively. “With social media, the world of cloud is the only sector to record an increase in the number of unique phishing URLs in 2023,” the study said.
However, with four brands in the top 10, financial services remain the sector where spoofing is most frequent (64,009 URLs, or 32% of the total). The Japanese group Softbank is 5th in the ranking, Bank of America 9th, and American Express 20th.