Phishing attacks reported annually (worldwide)

The number of objects humanity launches into low Earth orbit and the number of phishing attacks reported globally have, between 2015 and 2022, risen together at a correlation of 0.986, producing a pairing that sounds almost romantic. The satellites and the scammers are both reaching for the stars. One of them is succeeding.

Orbital launches climbed from around 90 in 2015 to over 180 by 2022, driven by SpaceX's reusable rockets and the Starlink constellation. Global phishing attacks grew from around 1.2 million per year in 2015 to over 4 million by 2022, as attacker toolkits improved, credential stuffing industrialized, and the migration of commerce to the internet provided an ever-richer target surface. Both trends reflect the same underlying phenomenon: the internet and the space industry are both infrastructures built on low-cost scale, and both attract exponential participation when the cost per unit drops far enough. Cheaper rockets and cheaper attack kits are children of the same logic.

Eight years of two lines rising together often describes a shared business model, not a shared purpose. Scale makes things possible, including the things that make us worse off. The sky and the inbox are both very full.