BSides Vancouver 2026

Modern email attacks do not succeed by looking sneaky. They succeed by being trustworthy. Over the past year, threat actors have gotten better at building organized campaigns with context that holds up even under careful scrutiny. By mimicking legitimate email threads, standing up polished infrastructure, and delivering content that is timely and relevant, they make it harder than ever for a person to tell what is real.

Based on our annual threat report and incidents observed in the wild, this talk examines trust abuse in email that goes beyond typical phishing. It focuses on the techniques attackers use to make their messages feel legitimate including thread hijacking, targeted calendar invites, and professionally impersonated websites.