Report by Cofense

The New Era of Phishing: Threats Built in the Age of AI

6 FINDINGSPublished Feb 4, 2026
View Original Report →

Key Findings

82% of malicious files have unique hashes that traditional pattern-matching fails to detect.

CofenseThe New Era of Phishing: Threats Built in the Age of AI·Feb 4, 2026
Malicious FilesThreat DetectionPhishingEmail Attack

Credential phishing campaigns using .es domains increase 51 times year-over-year, with the .es top-level domain jumping from the 56th to the 3rd most-abused TLD.

CofenseThe New Era of Phishing: Threats Built in the Age of AI·Feb 4, 2026
PhishingDomain AbuseCredential TheftCredential PhishingEmail Security

76% of initial infection URLs in abalyzed phishing attacks were unique and have not appeared in other campaigns across Cofense's customer base.

CofenseThe New Era of Phishing: Threats Built in the Age of AI·Feb 4, 2026
PhishingMalicious URLsEmail AttackEmail Security

Conversational attacks comprise 18% of all malicious emails.

CofenseThe New Era of Phishing: Threats Built in the Age of AI·Feb 4, 2026
PhishingEmail SecurityEmail Attack

In 2025, a malicious email attack occurs every 19 seconds, more than doubling from 2024’s pace of one every 42 seconds.

CofenseThe New Era of Phishing: Threats Built in the Age of AI·Feb 4, 2026
PhishingEmail SecurityEmail Attack

Abuse of legitimate remote access tools increased by 900% by volume.

CofenseThe New Era of Phishing: Threats Built in the Age of AI·Feb 4, 2026
Remote Access ToolsPhishingEmail SecurityEmail Attack