Summary 

WMC Global's Threat Intel Team analyzed thousands of phishing kits in 2020. While "16Shop" continues to be the most popular, kits capable of capturing gathering multi-factor authentication data, like "Puppeteer," are emerging. There was a large increase in SMS phishing compared to emails over 2020, indicating SMS will continue to be a substantial threat in 2021. WMC Global observed that consumer brands continued to be the primary target for phishing, with Netflix and Facebook being the most impersonated brands; however, WMC Global also observed new threat vectors for phishing in the form of COVID-themed phishing. The United States was the number one location for hosting phishing sites, with NameCheap being the provider hosting the most phishing sites over 2020. WMC Global predicts that in 2021 multi-factor authentication will become a focus for threat actors, phishing link delivery methods will continue to evolve, and phishing kit intelligence will be more prevalent in tracking threat actors. 

Threat actors target a range of services often either due to credential resale value or to target higher value accounts in credential stuffing campaigns. Last month, WMC Global tracked three unique Netflix-branded phishing campaigns that resulted in over 390,000 unique URLs (Figure 1). These campaigns were solely distributed via text messages (SMS) to US mobile numbers. WMC Global’s analysis in the campaigns provides unparalleled visibility into Netflix-branded phishing attacks.