QR Code Phishing: 4 Ways Scanners are Being Scammed

ReliaQuest documents a marked increase in QR-code phishing (quishing), citing a 51% spike in September 2023 and describing four attacker techniques—urgency-based coercion, impersonation of legitimate services, embedding QR codes in attachments to evade email filters, and redirect chains/typo-squatting—to harvest credentials or deploy malware; the report includes case investigations targeting education, healthcare, and executive personnel and recommends defenses such as user education, MFA, inbox rules, and automated QR extraction/analysis (GreyMatter Phishing Analyzer).