Focused Phishing: Attack Targets Victims With Trusted Sites and Live Validation

The Keep Aware threat research team recently observed a phishing incident that involved leveraging legitimate infrastructure, precision email validation, and evasive delivery techniques. This attack illustrates the abuse of trusted domains, the practice of server-side phishing email validation, and the critical need for browser-based, zero-day phishing protection. What Happened? In a live environment, the Keep Aware’s browser security solution was configured in silent mode to capture all user behavior and threat indicators without interrupting the session. This gave the security team full visibility into every stage of the phishing attempt as it unfolded, enabling a clear assessment of attack vectors, user actions, and detection fidelity. Identifying Credential Theft During a review of managed detections, the research team observed authentication-related phishing signals triggering in silent mode. This indicated that an employee had entered credentials on a suspicious webpage. B ... Read full article.