New wave of fraud sweeps Israel - schemes become more dangerous

Israeli cybersecurity company BrandShield has warned of increasingly sophisticated phishing attacks. Scammers are using AI to create forgeries, copying brands such as El Al and government agencies. A new technique allows real-time monitoring of victims' data entry. Over 1.5 million phishing domains were detected in the past year.

Israeli cybersecurity company BrandShield has published data indicating a sharp increase in the sophistication of phishing attacks. Over the past year, specialists have detected more than 1.5 million domains linked to phishing. Israel has been a target: using the El Al airline brand alone, 10,395 fake advertisements were found, and 1,165 fraudulent posts were disguised as offers related to the families of hostages. A particularly alarming new technical capability was observed in one campaign, where attackers sent SMS messages purporting to be from the transport authority demanding payment of a 100-shekel debt. The system used allowed real-time monitoring of what a person entered into page fields before hitting the submit button. Artificial intelligence has accelerated the creation of forgeries: a convincingly fake company can now be created in about five minutes. The scale of the problem extends beyond Israel: more than 10,000 suspicious domains related to the 2026 FIFA World Cup were discovered, along with about 4,800 advertisements using the name of Elon Musk.