AI-Powered Polymorphic Phishing Is Changing the Threat Landscape

Combined with AI, polymorphic phishing emails have become highly sophisticated, creating more personalized and evasive messages that result in higher attack success rates.

Our threat research team has observed a rise in polymorphic phishing campaigns being launched on a much larger scale than before. We found a 17% increase in phishing emails in February 2025 compared to the previous six months. Last year, at least one polymorphic feature was present in 76%of all phishing attacks.

Understanding Polymorphic Phishing

Polymorphic phishing is an advanced form of phishing campaign that randomizes the components of emails, such as their content, subject lines, and senders’ display names, to create several almost identical emails that only differ by a minor detail. In combination with AI, polymorphic phishing emails have become highly sophisticated, creating more personalized and evasive messages that result in higher attack success rates. Of all phishing emails we analyzed, 82% contained some ...