Threat Actors Ramp Up Use of Encoded URLs to Bypass Secure Email

Cofense and security reporting detail a growing tactic where attackers use Secure Email Gateway (SEG) URL encoding/link-rewriting to hide malicious destinations from recipient email security products, enabling phishing/malicious-link delivery to bypass defenses; several SEG vendors (VIPRE, Bitdefender, Hornet, Barracuda) have been observed abused, and mitigation focuses on user awareness since many SEGs do not adequately scan already-encoded links.