KnowBe4 Report Reveals Cybercriminals Abandoning 'Spray and Pray' Scams as Spear-Phishing Rises 41%
KnowBe4, Thursday, October 29th, 2026
KnowBe4's press release on Phishing Threat Trends Report Vol. 8 says spear phishing rose 41% as 'spray and pray' scams decline.
The report uses KnowBe4 Defend inbound email data, which processes 1.15 billion event signals daily.
Overall phishing grew 29.8% year over year with one dangerous email per 733, while mobile scams fell 47.3%, 419 fraud fell 31.3% and missed-message lures fell 11.3%, and spear phishing rose 41.1%, pre-attack scouting 33.7% and company impersonation 28%.
KnowBe4's Jack Chapman says checking sender addresses and links is becoming less useful because attackers sit on trusted infrastructure and react to news at machine speed.
In Q3 2026, attacks were twice as likely as in Q2 to originate from legitimate infrastructure.