Why brand impersonation is becoming an initial access vector

Brand-impersonation schemes (fake sites, apps, ads and social accounts) are being used as scalable initial-access campaigns to deliver malware; researchers found the same injected code across hundreds of poisoned sites (700+ examples including university sites) and a fake Cloudflare page used to distribute a ClickFix malware. The report highlights operational reuse (shared hosting, ASNs, SSL usage), rapid redeployment that defeats simple URL blocking, and recommends treating impersonation infrastructure like command-and-control with defined detection-to-takedown SLAs to disrupt attacker operations.