Why QR Codes Are Education’s New Phishing Blind Spot

The report outlines how attackers increasingly leverage QR code–based, image-only phishing to bypass traditional email security in education, citing a 2024–2025 UC Berkeley campaign impersonating UCPath via QR-code emails, SMS prompts for MFA codes, and malicious ads (e.g., ucpathidproxyca.com). It explains why legacy SEG/NLP detections fail on visual threats, presents required detection capabilities (computer vision, behavioral analysis, and domain intelligence), and recommends defense-in-depth measures including advanced email security, user education on quishing, MFA, DMARC, and easy reporting.