Cybercriminals impersonate the trusted e-signature model and ship pretend Docusign notifications to trick folks into making a gift of their private or company knowledge
27 Might 2025
•
,
5 min. learn
Bear in mind once you used to must print, signal, scan, e-mail and/and even fax each time you wished to signal and ship an official doc? As we speak, a lot of the exhausting work is finished 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 prospects 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 menace actors. Learn on to grasp the best way to maintain your workers protected from Docusign-themed phishing.
How does Docusign phishing work?
Social engineering is without doubt one of the greatest threats to your corporation. In accordance with Verizon, phishing is now an preliminary entry vector for 19% of knowledge breaches, whereas a whopping 60% characteristic a “human factor.” As a trusted and well known model, Docusign is a pure selection for menace actors seeking to harvest company logins and doubtlessly monetize assaults in different methods.
Victims will sometimes obtain an e-mail with a spoofed Docusign “envelope” requesting that they click on on a big yellow field to “overview doc.” There can also be an attachment that includes a QR code. Each actions might result in the identical consequence: the sufferer is taken to a phishing web site corresponding to a pretend 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 cellular system, which can not have safety software program put in to stop them from being taken to a malicious web page. Both manner, a focused phishing assault like this might additionally allow menace 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:
- “Authentic” Docusign envelopes that spoof invoices from suppliers, in a bid to trick corporations into transferring cash.
- Pretend bill scams impersonating US state and municipal businesses and designed to trick suppliers into wiring cash.
- Cybercriminals are usually not spoofing pretend Docusign emails, however as a substitute registering actual accounts with the corporate, and utilizing its APIs to ship out legit 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 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 folks’s belief in Docusign for knowledge theft (Supply: Reddit)
Staying protected
Luckily, there’s a lot 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 concentrate on the dangers and replace your phishing consciousness packages to make sure employees are in a position to spot the warning indicators of a rip-off e-mail. Simulation instruments ought to be customizable sufficient to assist this.
Issues employees ought to be taught to look out for embody:
- Vacation spot URLs: hover over any hyperlinks/buttons in Docusign emails to test the vacation spot URLs are legit.
- Safety codes: these ought to characteristic on any legit Docusign e-mail (within the “alternate sign up methodology” part) and permit the consumer to entry a doc immediately on the Docusign web site moderately than comply with hyperlinks in an e-mail.
- Attachments: there ought to be no attachments in an preliminary Docusign e-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 e-mail.
- An e-mail signature and sender title/e-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 can make it tougher for hackers to entry your knowledge, 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 device 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 e-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 relating to fund transfers, in order that any massive 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 for those who fall sufferer
If the worst occurs and an worker does click on by on a Docusign rip-off, you as an admin might want to work by 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 system 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 grasp 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 usually about unsolicited emails
After all, Docusign isn’t simply utilized by companies. You might 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 excellent time-saver. However be sure you don’t get caught out by scammers exploiting your belief in these apps.
