Cofense Reveals Rapid Rise in AI-Powered Phishing: New Threat Every 42 Seconds

Cofense, the leading provider of intelligence-driven phishing defense solutions, today released a new threat intelligence report: The Rise of AI – A New Era of Phishing Threats, which exposes how artificial intelligence (AI) is transforming the phishing threat landscape at a pace many security teams are struggling to match, exposing gaps in traditional perimeter defenses and reinforcing the need for post-perimeter visibility and rapid response.

In 2024, the Cofense Phishing Defense Center (PDC) tracked one malicious email every 42 seconds. Many of these were part of polymorphic phishing attacks that mutate in real-time to bypass traditional filters—creating an unprecedented challenge for defenders.

Cofense analysts observed a striking evolution in attacker tactics. AI gave threat actors the power to automate malware development, scale attacks across industries, and personalize phishing messages with surgical precision. These evolving threats are increasingly able to bypass traditional email filters, highlighting the failure of perimeter-only defenses and the need for post-delivery detection. It also enabled them to outmaneuver traditional defenses through polymorphic phishing campaigns that shift content on the fly. The result: deceptive messages that are increasingly difficult to detect and even harder to stop.

Many of the 42-second attacks were part of polymorphic phishing attacks, which continuously modify email subject lines, sender names, and body content to avoid signature-based detection. These shape-shifting tactics now require a defense strategy that combines expert-supervised AI with real-time behavioral context, giving analysts the precision needed to stop threats that evade traditional filters.

Nowhere is this convergence more apparent than in the rise of business email compromise (BEC). Threat actors are now using AI to craft highly convincing emails that impersonate C-suite executives, often mimicking real forwarded threads and referencing payment approvals. These messages are sent from lookalike domains such as “@consultant.com,” and because they’re written by AI, they contain fewer typos, inconsistent formatting, or phrasing that would normally raise suspicion.

The report outlines five key trends shaping the AI-powered phishing landscape:

• A surge in new malware families: Over 40% of malware detected in 2024 was newly observed, with nearly half classified as Remote Access Trojans (RATs). These versatile threats enable persistent access and signal a shift toward more complex, multipurpose attacks.

• Flawless generative phishing: Threat actors are using AI to craft highly personalized phishing emails that mimic internal communications with near-perfect grammar and tone, detected and clustered by Cofense’s expert-supervised AI and real-time user intelligence.

• BEC attacks explode: Email-based scams surged 70% year-over-year, driven by AI’s ability to automate lures, spoof internal conversations, and bypass spam filters with subtle text variations.

• Polymorphic attacks evade filters: Campaigns now mutate in real time, changing subject lines, sender addresses, and message content to slip past filters, making post-delivery visibility and rapid remediation essential for defense.

• Diversified deception: Threat actors broadened their tactics—tax scams up 340%, legitimate file abuse up 575%, and Microsoft spoofing spiking 156%, making campaigns harder to anticipate and block.

As threat actors continue to refine their use of AI, Cofense remains committed to helping organizations stay ahead through expert-supervised AI, human intelligence, and a global network of over 35 million trained users, augmenting existing email security with post-delivery detection and response that perimeter tools miss.

Stay ahead of AI-powered phishing threats. Download the full Cofense Rise of AI – A New Era of Phishing Threats report here and secure your spot in the expert-led webinar here to learn how to strengthen your defenses.

Methodology

This report is based on proprietary threat intelligence collected and analyzed by the Cofense Phishing Defense Center (PDC) throughout 2024, drawing on millions of real-world phishing threats reported by a global network of over 35 million trained users.

About Cofense

Cofense is the only cybersecurity company leveraging expert-supervised AI for phishing detection and response—delivering human-vetted intelligence and real-world training to help enterprises stay ahead of modern threats. Built to augment existing email defenses, Cofense identifies attacks that bypass perimeter filters, remediates them in minutes, and continuously strengthens the human layer through simulations modeled on active phishing campaigns. Informed by insights from over 35 million trained users, Cofense enables faster containment of threats and measurable reductions in risk. Organizations like Visa, Siemens, and Blue Cross Blue Shield rely on Cofense to reduce exposure, meet regulatory demands, and build lasting resilience against the most persistent cyber threat: phishing.

Smarter phishing defense. Stronger human security. www.cofense.com

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