Fraudsters are launching phishing attacks that use custom 404 pages to steal users’ Microsoft login credentials.

As reported by Bleeping Computer, the Microsoft security researchers who analyzed the phishing attacks observed that digital fraudsters had registered a domain and configured a 404 error page to display a fake Microsoft login form designed to look exactly like Microsoft’s official login page. Threat actors lifted various links from Microsoft’s official page, including those used to create a new account and to sign in to an existing record, and included them in their fake portal.

By configuring a 404 error page instead of creating a single landing page, the phishers afforded themselves and their campaigns a significant degree of flexibility. Microsoft’s analysts noted that these fraudsters can essentially pair their domain with an infinite number of phishing landing pages. The researchers also observed attackers randomizing their domains, which further increased the number of phishing URL possibilities available to them going forward.

Phishers’ Ongoing Use of Fake 404 Pages

This isn’t the first time that phishers have used fake 404 pages to realize their malicious intentions. Back in 2016, for instance, Sucuri came across one campaign that redirected those coming from a security service to a 404 error page to protect their attacks. Two years later, Bleeping Computer discovered that attackers were using login pages disguised as HTTP error pages to access a web shell and issue commands on the server.

More recently, in February 2019, Sucuri spotted attackers using fake 404 error pages and reCAPTCHA elements as part of their efforts to distribute banking malware.

How to Defend Against Phishing Attacks

Security professionals can bolster their defenses against phishing attacks by investing in a security awareness program that teaches employees look out for suspicious links, malicious email attachments and other phishing-related techniques. Organizations should also adopt a layered approach to email security in which they verify that their perimeter protection systems have spam detection services.

More from

Vulnerability resolution enhanced by integrations

2 min read - Why speed is of the essence in today's cybersecurity landscape? How are you quickly achieving vulnerability resolution?Identifying vulnerabilities should be part of the daily process within an organization. It's an important piece of maintaining an organization’s security posture. However, the complicated nature of modern technologies — and the pace of change — often make vulnerability management a challenging task.In the past, many organizations had to support manual integration work to get different security systems to ‘talk’ to each other. As…

How I got started: SIEM engineer

2 min read - As careers in cybersecurity become increasingly more specialized, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) engineers are playing a more prominent role. These professionals are like forensic specialists but are also on the front lines protecting sensitive information from the relentless onslaught of cyber threats. SIEM engineers meticulously monitor, analyze and manage security events and incidents within an organization. They leverage SIEM tools to aggregate and correlate data, enabling them to detect anomalies, identify potential threats and respond swiftly to security…

Tequila OS 2.0: The first forensic Linux distribution in Latin America

3 min read - Incident response teams are stretched thin, and the threats are only intensifying. But new tools are helping bridge the gap for cybersecurity pros in Latin America.IBM Security X-Force Threat Intelligence Index 2023 found that 12% of the security incidents X-force responded to were in Latin America. In comparison, 31% were in the Asia-Pacific, followed by Europe with 28%, North America with 25% and the Middle East with 4%. In the Latin American region, Brazil had 67% of incidents that X-Force…

Cost of a data breach 2023: Geographical breakdowns

4 min read - Data breaches can occur anywhere in the world, but they are historically more common in specific countries. Typically, countries with high internet usage and digital services are more prone to data breaches. To that end, IBM’s Cost of a Data Breach Report 2023 looked at 553 organizations of various sizes across 16 countries and geographic regions, and 17 industries. In the report, the top five costs of a data breach by country or region (measured in USD millions) for 2023…