Nearly two-thirds of all advanced email attacks used emails impersonating Microsoft or Amazon, according to new research by Agari.

Microsoft was impersonated in 36 percent of all (brand) display name impersonation attacks in the third quarter. Amazon was the second most commonly impersonated company, used in 27 percent of these attacks. Amazon and Microsoft run the largest public cloud computing platforms, which are widely used by companies undergoing digital transformation projects.

The pattern was different for high-value targets, such as C-suite executives—Microsoft was impersonated in 71 percent of these attacks. Dropbox is a distant second at seven percent, followed by UPS at six percent.