

While OneNote does warn users about the risk of suspicious document links, this doesn’t always have the intended effect. Victims must open the email message, open the attachment and then click through on malicious links. Educational institutions were on the receiving end of more widespread campaigns that included fictitious invoices or offers of Christmas bonuses.ĭespite the new file format, OneNote phishing attacks play out much like their more familiar counterparts.

In the case of industrial and manufacturing firms, attachments appeared to be documents containing details about machine parts or specifications. Malicious actors also created a mix of specific and general compromise campaigns. As of February 2023, more than 60 attacks were confirmed on companies in the manufacturing, industrial and education sectors.Ĭommon payloads attached to malicious documents include AsyncRAT, AgentTesla, Doubleback and Redline. The first OneNote attacks were discovered in December 2022 as attackers experimented with new phishing methods. Next is efficacy: As noted by ZDNET, multiple AV tools did not flag OneNote attachments as malicious, even when they contained malware payloads. The first is novelty: Businesses aren’t expecting attacks in. For cyber criminals, the benefits of OneNote are two-fold. To combat this cybersecurity change, attackers went looking for a new approach and found it in OneNote documents. While users can enable them after the fact, malicious actors can no longer rely on macros to make their phishing efforts easier. Despite a temporary rollback in response to user concerns, auto-blocking of macros is now standard operating practice. In July 2022, Microsoft disabled macros by default in all Office document types. one file extensions, and January 2023 saw an attack uptick as compromises continued. First noticed in December 2022, this phishing framework has seen success in fooling multiple antivirus (AV) tools by using. There are plenty of phish in the digital sea, and attackers are constantly looking for new bait that helps them bypass security perimeters and land in user inboxes.
