Cybercriminals impersonate the trusted e-signature model and ship pretend Docusign notifications to trick individuals into freely giving their private or company information
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 exhausting work is completed behind the scenes by cloud app suppliers like Docusign.
However like all tech manufacturers, as soon as it has reached a vital 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 how you can preserve your workers protected from Docusign-themed phishing.
How does Docusign phishing work?
Social engineering is likely one of the greatest threats to your corporation. Based on Verizon, phishing is now an preliminary entry vector for 19% of information breaches, whereas a whopping 60% characteristic a “human aspect.” As a trusted and widely known model, Docusign is a pure alternative for risk actors seeking to harvest company logins and probably monetize assaults in different methods.
Victims will sometimes obtain an electronic mail with a spoofed Docusign “envelope” requesting that they click on on a big yellow field to “evaluate doc.” There may be an attachment that includes a QR code. Each actions may result in the identical consequence: the sufferer is taken to a phishing web site comparable to a pretend Microsoft login web page, and requested to enter private and/or monetary info.
QR codes are additionally in style as they require the consumer to scan with their cellular machine, which can not have safety software program put in to stop them from being taken to a malicious web page. Both means, a focused phishing assault like this might additionally allow risk actors to achieve a vital foothold in company networks, in addition to for privilege escalation, lateral motion and information exfiltration/ransomware.
Some examples
Over the previous few months, incidents have emerged of:
- “Professional” Docusign envelopes that spoof invoices from suppliers, in a bid to trick firms into transferring cash.
- Faux bill scams impersonating US state and municipal businesses and designed to trick suppliers into wiring cash.
- Cybercriminals will not be spoofing pretend Docusign emails, however as an alternative registering actual accounts with the corporate, and utilizing its APIs to ship out reliable envelopes spoofing in style manufacturers.
- Common phishing emails spoofing the Docusign model and taking the consumer to phishing login pages. These may mimic company HR and payroll departments, and even exterior entities like municipal authorities.
- Refund scams which cite a pretend 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 cellphone, they’ll be persuaded at hand over their private/monetary/card particulars to say the ‘refund’.
Instance of a rip-off abusing individuals’s belief in Docusign for information theft (Supply: Reddit)
Staying protected
Happily, there’s loads 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 packages to make sure employees are capable of spot the warning indicators of a rip-off electronic mail. Simulation instruments needs to be customizable sufficient to help this.
Issues staff needs to be taught to look out for embrace:
- Vacation spot URLs: hover over any hyperlinks/buttons in Docusign emails to test the vacation spot URLs are reliable.
- Safety codes: these ought to characteristic on any reliable Docusign electronic mail (within the “alternate sign up methodology” part) and permit the consumer to entry a doc instantly on the Docusign web site somewhat than comply with hyperlinks in an electronic mail.
- Attachments: there needs to 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 through attachment.
- Spelling, grammatical and tonal errors: are one other tell-tale signal of a phishing electronic mail.
- An electronic mail signature and sender identify/electronic mail handle that don’t match.
Layer up defenses on high 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 information, even when they do handle to steal your logins.
- Password hygiene, together with use of sturdy, distinctive passwords for every account, saved in a password supervisor.
- A multi-layered safety software 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 situations 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 through 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 staff and to spam@docusign.com.
What to do if you happen to 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 selected set of actions, together with:
- Reset passwords for the impacted consumer, together with any accounts that they could have reused credentials throughout
- Run a malware scan on the sufferer’s machine to detect and take away any malicious code
- Isolate the machine from the community to comprise the “blast radius” of an assault
- Monitor the darkish net for indicators of knowledge 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 achieve 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 normally 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, lots of the suggestions above will nonetheless stand you in good stead. Digital signing apps are an incredible time-saver. However be sure you don’t get caught out by scammers exploiting your belief in these apps.
