As people become more aware of phishing attacks, threat actors are constantly evolving their social engineering tactics to continue to compromise victims. To help organizations stay ahead of the latest phishing tactics, Cofense has written a report highlighting threat actors’ use of misleading dates in subject lines to influence the emotions of recipients and create a false sense of urgency. 

Researchers at Cofense analyzed phishing emails from July 2023 to create the report. According to the researchers, “the subject lines seen were intentionally deceptive, and the dates used in the subjects covered a range from a few days before the email was sent to several days afterwards. Subject lines such as these are specially designed to create a false sense of urgency requiring the victim’s immediate interaction, and not allowing them time to consider how suspicious the email is.” The report divides the phishing emails into the ratios of subjects with dates to those without, late emails (emails with subject times before the date they were accessed), early emails (emails with subject times after the date they were accessed), and on time emails (subjects that had dates in them which matched to the date they were accessed). The report found that in over two-thirds of the emails with dates in their subject line, the listed dates are before the email is accessed, which is not surprising since threat actors employ this tactic to create a false sense of urgency. Therefore, if the date in a subject line is before the date the email is accessed, the recipient should apply additional scrutiny.

Phishing attacks continue to increase every year, according to recent research reports. In fact, just this month a water utility reported a credential phishing attack to WaterISAC. To defend against this activity, members are encouraged to conduct regular security awareness training and implement technical controls, such as multifactor authentication (MFA). Read more at Cofense.