Cybercriminals impersonate the trusted e-signature model and ship faux Docusign notifications to trick folks into gifting away their private or company knowledge
27 Might 2025
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5 min. learn
Bear in mind once you used to need to print, signal, scan, electronic mail and/and even fax each time you wished to signal and ship an official doc? Right this moment, a lot of the onerous work is finished behind the scenes by cloud app suppliers like Docusign.
However like all tech manufacturers, as soon as it has reached a crucial mass of customers, cybercriminals will search for methods to abuse it for their very own ends. Docusign claims to have 1.6 million clients all over the world, together with 95% of the Fortune 500, and over one billion customers. That has put it firmly within the crosshairs of risk actors. Learn on to know preserve your staff protected from Docusign-themed phishing.
How does Docusign phishing work?
Social engineering is among the greatest threats to your enterprise. Based on Verizon, phishing is now an preliminary entry vector for 19% of information breaches, whereas a whopping 60% characteristic a “human ingredient.” As a trusted and widely known model, Docusign is a pure selection for risk actors trying to harvest company logins and doubtlessly monetize assaults in different methods.
Victims will usually obtain an electronic mail with a spoofed Docusign “envelope” requesting that they click on on a big yellow field to “evaluate doc.” There can also be an attachment that includes a QR code. Each actions might result in the identical end result: the sufferer is taken to a phishing website akin to a faux Microsoft login web page, and requested to enter private and/or monetary data.
QR codes are additionally in style as they require the consumer to scan with their cell gadget, which can not have safety software program put in to stop them from being taken to a malicious web page. Both approach, a focused phishing assault like this might additionally allow risk actors to realize a vital foothold in company networks, in addition to for privilege escalation, lateral motion and knowledge exfiltration/ransomware.
Some examples
Over the previous few months, incidents have emerged of:
- “Reputable” Docusign envelopes that spoof invoices from suppliers, in a bid to trick corporations into transferring cash.
- Faux bill scams impersonating US state and municipal companies and designed to trick suppliers into wiring cash.
- Cybercriminals should not spoofing faux Docusign emails, however as an alternative registering actual accounts with the corporate, and utilizing its APIs to ship out reputable envelopes spoofing in style manufacturers.
- Common phishing emails spoofing the Docusign model and taking the consumer to phishing login pages. These might mimic company HR and payroll departments, and even exterior entities like municipal authorities.
- Refund scams which cite a faux transaction and attempt to power the sufferer into calling a quantity in the event that they wish to cancel it. As soon as on the telephone, they’ll be persuaded handy over their private/monetary/card particulars to say the ‘refund’.
Instance of a rip-off abusing folks’s belief in Docusign for knowledge theft (Supply: Reddit)
Staying protected
Thankfully, there’s lots you are able to do to maintain your self and your organization protected from Docusign threats. From an organization’s perspective, the primary plan of action is to pay attention to the dangers and replace your phishing consciousness applications to make sure employees are capable of spot the warning indicators of a rip-off electronic mail. Simulation instruments must be customizable sufficient to help this.
Issues employees must be taught to look out for embrace:
- Vacation spot URLs: hover over any hyperlinks/buttons in Docusign emails to examine the vacation spot URLs are reputable.
- Safety codes: these ought to characteristic on any reputable Docusign electronic mail (within the “alternate register technique” part) and permit the consumer to entry a doc instantly on the Docusign website reasonably than comply with hyperlinks in an electronic mail.
- Attachments: there must be no attachments in an preliminary Docusign electronic mail. Solely as soon as a doc has been signed will you obtain a completed model of it by way of attachment.
- Spelling, grammatical and tonal errors: are one other tell-tale signal of a phishing electronic mail.
- An electronic mail signature and sender title/electronic mail deal with that don’t match.
Layer up defenses on prime of the safety consciousness piece by together with issues like:
- Multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all company accounts, which is able to make it tougher for hackers to entry your knowledge, even when they do handle to steal your logins.
- Password hygiene, together with use of robust, distinctive passwords for every account, saved in a password supervisor.
- A multi-layered safety instrument from a good vendor like ESET, which, amongst different issues, detects malicious attachments, prevents customers from following hyperlinks to phishing websites, and permits directors to manually outline electronic mail filtering circumstances and actions.
- Up to date coverage to induce customers to not open attachments or comply with hyperlinks in any unsolicited emails, and solely entry Docusign docs by way of the safety code.
- Altering inner enterprise processes concerning fund transfers, in order that any giant sums are topic to further scrutiny.
- Encouraging customers to report all suspicious Docusign-themed emails to your IT/safety workforce and to spam@docusign.com.
What to do in case you fall sufferer
If the worst occurs and an worker does click on by way of on a Docusign rip-off, you as an admin might want to work by way of a particular set of actions, together with:
- Reset passwords for the impacted consumer, together with any accounts that they might have reused credentials throughout
- Run a malware scan on the sufferer’s machine to detect and take away any malicious code
- Isolate the gadget from the community to include the “blast radius” of an assault
- Monitor the darkish internet for indicators of data theft/leakage
- Monitor the sufferer’s accounts for uncommon exercise
- Dig deeper with forensics to know what the attacker wished and whether or not they managed to realize elevated inner entry
- Use the occasion as a studying second for workers: encouraging them to report suspicious emails quickly and to be on their guard basically about unsolicited emails
After all, Docusign isn’t simply utilized by companies. You may need been uncovered to it in a private capability when shopping for a home or finishing tax paperwork. In that case, most of the ideas above will nonetheless stand you in good stead. Digital signing apps are an incredible time-saver. However be sure to don’t get caught out by scammers exploiting your belief in these apps.
