Description

Microsoft Copilot, which is a common AI-based productivity tool, has been used by hackers to deploy advanced phishing campaigns against organizations. The attacks, as discovered by Cofense, consist of phishing emails with a sender appearing as "Co-pilot" that impersonates official Microsoft communication. The messages may include notification of spurious invoices for Copilot services that lure users into clicking on compromised links. These links direct the user to phishing sites that emulate Microsoft's platforms, including login pages that steal credentials. The sudden use of Microsoft Copilot in organizations has opened a new attack vector for attackers. As employees might be unaware of the look or structure of emails from the service, they stand a higher chance of being phished. The spoof login pages, and MFA prompts utilized in these attacks are intended to capture login credentials and enable unauthorized access, creating a serious threat to organizations' security. The attackers take advantage of the trust in Microsoft branding to trick users and obtain sensitive information. Organizations can safeguard against such attacks by putting in place robust security measures, such as Microsoft's spoof intelligence insight tool to detect and block phishing emails. Also, workers need to be educated to detect suspicious emails and confirm the genuineness of any message, particularly in relation to money transfers or login password requests. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) must be applied, but end-users should also know about common phishing attacks to prevent becoming a victim of credential compromise. All these precautionary steps will prevent organizations from getting attacked by the advanced AI-powered phishing threats.