5 Reasons Why Attackers Are Phishing Over LinkedIn

LinkedIn has become a hotbed for phishing as attackers run sophisticated spear-phishing campaigns against company executives, with targets seen in financial services and technology verticals. According to Push Security, 1 in 3 phishing attacks now occur over non-email channels such as social media and messaging apps, making LinkedIn a prime vector.

The article notes that LinkedIn DMs bypass traditional email security tools, leaving organisations with limited visibility and no easy way to recall messages sent to multiple users. Attackers can hijack legitimate accounts, scale outreach using AI-powered direct messages, and rotate phishing domains faster than blocks can keep up, a dynamic described as a game of whack-a-mole.

These factors, combined with the tendency of professionals to open messages from known contacts, make LinkedIn phishing both cheap to deploy and highly effective against high-value targets. The potential rewards are substantial, as compromising a single account can enable access to core cloud apps and connected services, sometimes cascading into business-wide breaches.