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An error message is returned when an incorrect, dummy, or test email address is entered | Image: Cofense
A recent report by Cofense Intelligence reveals a game-changing phishing technique called Precision-Validated Phishing—a surgical approach to credential theft that’s leaving security teams scrambling.
Forget the spray-and-pray tactics of traditional phishing. This new method is all about quality over quantity, with threat actors only targeting pre-verified, active email accounts, making their attacks stealthier, more effective, and harder to detect.
“Cybercriminals are leveling up their credential phishing tactics using Precision-Validated Phishing, a technique that leverages real-time email validation to ensure only high-value targets receive the phishing attempt,” the report states.
Traditional phishing casts a wide net, indiscriminately targeting countless users. Precision-validated phishing, in contrast, is highly selective. It verifies email addresses against a pre-harvested list of active, legitimate, and often high-value accounts before presenting the phishing page. If an address isn’t on the list, the user may encounter an error or be redirected to a benign page.
This method offers several advantages for attackers:
- It increases efficiency and the likelihood of capturing valid, actively used credentials.
- It hinders security teams’ ability to analyze and defend against these campaigns.
- It makes it difficult for automated systems to detect and analyze attacks.
Cofense researchers have observed JavaScript-based validation scripts and API-integrated email checkers embedded directly into phishing kits. In some cases, Base64-encoded URLs even conceal the email lists used for validation.
“Attackers integrate legitimate email verification APIs into their phishing kits, allowing them to check email validity in real-time.”
If you’re on the list, the phishing site proceeds to the next phase—harvesting credentials and possibly sending a validation code or secondary authentication prompt to your inbox, complicating forensic analysis even further.
Precision-validated phishing presents unique challenges for cybersecurity professionals. Traditional tactics, like submitting fake credentials for analysis, become ineffective. The selective nature of these attacks also makes detection through threat intelligence sharing more difficult.
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