Most phishing emails originate from Eastern Europe: Barracuda

Researchers at Barracuda Networks say they have found phishing emails more likely to originate from certain countries in parts of Eastern Europe, Central America, the Middle East and Africa.

The cloud-enabled security solutions provider teamed up with Columbia University researchers to examine the geolocation for more than two billion emails.

Senders that produce a higher volume of phishing emails (more than 1,000 emails) with a higher probability of phishing originated from Lithuania, Latvia, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Colombia, Iran, Palestine and Kazakhstan.

Also read: Ransomware gangs emailing customers of victims to extort them

Cybercriminals use social engineering tactics to lure victims through phishing emails into providing personal information such as usernames, passwords, credit card numbers or banking information.

"With phishing attacks expected to play a dominant role in the digital threat landscape, it is crucial to have a solution that detects and protects against spear-phishing attacks, including brand impersonation and email account takeover," said Barracuda's Country Manager Murali Urs.

However, some countries have a high volume of phishing originating from them but still have an extremely low probability of phishing.

Read more: Notion went offline for hours due to phishing complaints to its domain registrar: Report

For example, 129,369 phishing emails in the dataset were sent from the United States, but the US only has a 0.02 per cent probability of phishing. In general, most countries had a phishing probability of 10 per cent or less.

The attackers have been using legitimate cloud service providers like Amazon, Microsoft, and Twitter to send phishing emails. It is important to focus on the content of such emails and attacker behaviour to detect the same, said Barracuda Networks.