QR Phishing Hits Record Levels as Attackers Hide Malicious Links Inside QR Codes

QR-code phishing (“quishing”) has surged to record levels, with telemetry from ESET and Microsoft showing millions of detections and rapid growth; attackers embed QR images in PDFs and emails to redirect users—often to mobile-optimized credential-harvesting pages—bypassing traditional email defenses. The report describes common delivery vectors, multi-stage redirect/evasion techniques (shorteners, CAPTCHA, TDS), geographic detection distribution, and recommends extending URL inspection to images, enforcing phishing-resistant MFA, and user training.