ChainLink Phishing: How Trusted Domains Become Threat Vectors
Phishing remains one of cybersecurity’s most enduring threats, not because defenders aren’t evolving, but because attackers are adapting even faster.
Today’s most effective campaigns aren’t just built on spoofed emails or shady domains. They exploit something far more insidious: trust in the tools and services we use every day, leading to zero-hour phishing.
The Rise of ChainLink Phishing
Traditional phishing relied on easily identifiable red flags such as suspicious senders and questionable URLs. But modern phishing has matured.
Attackers now deploy chained sequences, funneling a victim from email through trusted infrastructure before harvesting credentials.
An employee might receive a link from what appears to be Google Drive or Dropbox. At first glance, there’s nothing unusual. But after the initial click, the user is quietly routed through a series of prompts, each looking credible on reputable sites, until they unknowingly hand over business-essential credentials to an attacker.
This technique, which we call ChainLink Phishing, relies on leveraging the legitimate platforms and reputable domains that enterprise tools allow and that IT security teams are oblivious to.
- Why These Attacks Are So Effective
The browser has become the center of the knowledge worker’s universe. From code reviews to HR tasks, nearly every action begins and ends in a browser tab.This centralization gives attackers a singular surface to exploit, yet it has been vastly underprotected. Even the most security-aware employees can be deceived when a link appears to come from a known domain and follows the expected behavior. The user often believes they’re engaging in normal activity until it’s too late.
By using legitimate links, passing email authentication checks, and even inserting CAPTCHAs along the way, attackers sidestep traditional defenses and enable zero-hour phishing to succeed undetected. CAPTCHAs and verification steps are now so common in everyday browsing that attackers exploit them as social engineering tactics, not only in phishing campaigns, but also in other browser-based threats like ClickFix.
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