How Attackers Turn SVG Files Into Phishing Lures

Businesses today are dealing with faster, stealthier email threats that look routine yet unleash aggressively malicious scripts the moment a user engages. This is especially true when the lure arrives as an attachment that resembles a harmless image file. 

The perception gap is exactly what attackers exploit with SVG phishing, whereby what appears to be an SVG file is actually XML text that can carry links, redirects, and scripted behaviors.

These can masquerade as a logo, button, or invoice graphic and then hand the victim off to a credential harvester or session hijacking flow, which is exactly the pattern that researchers from ANY.RUN reported recently.

Industry benchmarks indicate this is not a theoretical edge case. SVG phishing attacks were virtually unknown in 2024 but rose from 0.1% of attacks that year to 4.9% of phishing by the first half of 2025, according to Hoxhunt.

The tide seems to have peaked in March this year at 15%, underscoring the growing risk of these lures as adversaries look for formats that slip past legacy attachment filtering policies.

In short, the combination of trusted visual design, attachment-first delivery, and code-capable image files explains why SVG phishing has moved from curiosity to commonplace.

This is why security teams and decision-makers should tune policy, inspection, and response with this specific vector in mind.

Why SVG Phishing Is a Problem Now

An SVG is a vector graphic made of text and XML, which means it can carry links, scripts, and redirects. It behaves more like a tiny web page than a static image.

Attackers can weaponize this by sending small SVG attachments that render a convincing image yet redirect to a credential harvester or MFA-bypass flow. 

Phishing campaigns increasingly attach compact SVG files that render brand-faithful prompts such as “view invoice,” “confirm account,” “open statement,” and then hand off to credential theft or session hijacking flows once a user clicks.

Mail gateways and client apps have historically treated such “images” as low risk, even though the SVG format’s text-based content supports heavy obfuscation.

SVG phishing is gaining ground not necessarily because users are careless, but because the file type invites misplaced trust, and the tooling around it hasn’t fully caught up.

Combined with trusted-brand styling and short-lived infrastructure, SVG phishing lures can evade both signature-based inspection and hurried human judgment.

The first evasion is psychological. Receivers treat “images” as safe and click readily, while brand-faithful visuals lower suspicion. The second is technical.

Text-based SVGs pack base64 blobs, JavaScript, external references, or data URIs that some tools don’t fully sanitize at the attachment layer.

The third is operational. Adversaries rotate domains and CDN links inside SVG code, so even when defenders block one path, the lure quickly reroutes.

These traits help SVG phishing outperform older “macro doc” tactics that have been blunted by hardened defaults in Office and mail clients.

For instance, like other email providers, Microsoft has responded by retiring SVG rendering in Outlook for Web and Windows, leaving placeholders instead.

Hardening Your Defenses Against SVG Threats

Start with policy. If your business does not rely on SVG attachments, block them at the secure email gateway and collaboration perimeter, allowing only PNG/JPG for images. 

If you must allow SVGs, enforce server-side sanitization and content disarm and reconstruction (CDR) so that any scripts, external references, and event handlers are stripped before delivery.

Render SVGs in a sandboxed viewer that forbids external calls and JavaScript, and log any attempted outbound requests for threat hunting.

Tune your mail gateway to parse inside the SVG, not just the wrapper. This enables you to flag data URIs, onload/onmouseover handlers, and suspicious chains. 

Finally, align clients with updated or more secure defaults on inline SVG behavior to eliminate opportunistic render-path attacks.

Fighting Back with People and Processes

Security awareness should treat “SVG” as an active file type, not a safe picture. Thus, coach employees to report unexpected graphics-only attachments from vendors or SaaS brands.

Since the median time-to-fall is under a minute, auto-quarantine workflows and one-click reporting buttons are essential to pull copies from other inboxes before widespread clicks. 

Simulated exercises should include SVG phishing scenarios that mimic real-world brand design, short subjects, and call-to-action buttons.

Pair this with tabletop drills where incident response teams practice extracting malicious SVGs, enumerating external references, and tracing credential theft across CASB and IdP logs. 

In terms of incident response and metrics, track hit rates for attachment-only campaigns separately from link-only phishes to surface gaps hidden by blended reporting.

Review supplier communications that commonly include imagery, such as marketing assets, invoices, and shipping labels. These can be ready-made covers for SVG phishing lures if your allow-list is loose. 

Isolate the mailbox and capture the original attachment, then use a safe text viewer to inspect for external href values, base64 blobs, and event handlers.

Block-listed domains should be added to mail and web filters immediately, and identity teams should search IDP logs for fresh sessions and 2FA prompts around the lure’s delivery window. 

If credentials were entered, force resets and revoke refresh tokens, then monitor for token replay and OAuth consent grants abused during the phish.

Close the loop by updating SEG rules for the exact obfuscation method so that the next variant is caught sooner.

The Bottom Line

SVG phishing is not a fad. It is part of a wider pivot to file-centric social engineering that exploits speed and ambiguity.

As platforms remove easy render paths, like Outlook dropping inline SVGs, the advantage tilts back to defenders who combine policy, inspection, and user education. 

But attackers will continue evolving, so any improvements to the process should be treated as ongoing capacity building, not a one-off block-list tweak.

Keep SVG phishing on your radar during quarterly control reviews, and validate with live exercises so that your technology and human defenses can neutralize the lure before it can do any damage.

Again, if you do not need SVG attachments, block them. If you do, sanitize and sandbox them. Don’t treat images as safe.

SVG phishing thrives on speed and misplaced trust, but you can flip the script with simple policy, deeper inspection, and practiced response.