Phishing-as-a-Service: How Professional Attack Services Abuse Your Brand Name
Criminals offer phishing infrastructure as a service. How your brand becomes a weapon against your customers – and what you can do about it.
Phishing is Industrialized
What was once handcrafted emails with obvious typos is today a highly professional, scaled industry. Phishing-as-a-Service (PhaaS) means: criminals can today purchase fully equipped phishing campaigns without technical knowledge – including deceptively real replicas of your website, hosting infrastructure, email sending, and sometimes even anti-detection measures against security scanners.
Platforms like EvilProxy, Tycoon 2FA, or Robin Banks (partly shut down, but quickly replaced by successors) offer complete solutions for attackers who abuse brand names of well-known companies for their campaigns.
How Your Brand Name Becomes a Weapon
The typical scheme: attackers register a domain similar to your real domain name (typosquatting), build a deceptively real copy of your login page or customer portal, and mass-send emails that appear to come from you. The goal: steal your customers' credentials, redirect payments, or spread ransomware via infected attachments.
The consequences for the affected company are significant – even if the actual damage occurs to customers:
- Reputational damage: Customers who were defrauded associate the damage with your brand, not the criminals.
- Legal risks: In certain constellations, companies may bear liability if they knew (or should have known) about phishing campaigns in their name and did not take appropriate countermeasures.
- Operational burden: Reactive combating of phishing campaigns is expensive and time-consuming – proactive monitoring is considerably more efficient.
What Early Detection and Fast Takedown Achieve
The most effective protection against brand abuse campaigns is a two-stage approach:
Early Detection: Continuous monitoring for new domain registrations similar to your brand name, phishing kit activity in darknet sources, and initial phishing emails intercepted via honeypots. Campaigns are typically detected before they scale.
Fast Takedown: Once a phishing site or abusive domain is identified, time begins. Every hour such a site is online means potential victims. Experienced takedown specialists work with hosting providers, domain registrars, and national authorities, typically achieving shutdown times of 2–4 hours.
Note: This article is for general information. For legal questions related to phishing attacks, we recommend legal advice.
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