Why is quishing, a variant of phishing, even more dangerous ?

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Phishing, which involves stealing passwords or other sensitive information from the victim by redirecting them to a malicious link, is still very common in 2024. However, email services are now better equipped to protect their users, particularly thanks to artificial intelligence. However, some hackers have already found a way to bypass existing protections that automatically detect malicious links: quishing.

This attack is based on the same principle as phishing. But instead of sending a link to the victim, this method involves sending a QR code. In essence, people targeted by a quishing attack can receive an email with an attachment, for example a PDF document, which contains a QR code. And it is this QR code, if scanned, that directs the victim to a malicious site.

Why a QR code instead of a URL ?

As mentioned above, email services already offer advanced defenses to detect malicious links in emails. However, the QR code can slip through the cracks, since it will not necessarily be analyzed by security features that detect malicious links.

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“This type of phishing often bypasses conventional defenses such as secure email gateways. In particular, QR codes contained in emails are perceived by many secure email gateways as meaningless images, making users vulnerable to specific forms of phishing attacks. QR codes can also be presented to targeted victims in several other ways”, we read in a publication of the company Cloudflare.

In a previous article, we also mentioned attacks targeting (physical) mailboxes with documents including malicious QR codes.

A danger that worries banks

In a recently published article, the Financial Times indicates that this new danger is increasingly worrying banks. The newspaper explains that in addition to regulators such as the UK National Cyber ​​Security Centre or the American trade policeman, banks such as HSBC or TSB are sounding the alarm. The FT also reports that quishing attacks may have become more common after the pandemic, during which QR code technology became very popular.

• The phishing attack consists of stealing information from the victim by redirecting the victim to a malicious site
• The quisging variant is based on the same principle, but uses a QR code included in the attachments of an email, instead of a URL
• Indeed, QR codes would be able to bypass certain security devices

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