5 Common Types Of Phishing

[Kum Verna]

Unfortunatelythese slight adjustments are often enough to catch us out. Thanks to timeless strategies or carefully orchestrated social engineering tactics, each new campaign looks genuine enough to trick overworked or negligent employees.

In this example, the message suggests that you have been the victim of fraud and tells you to follow a link to prevent further damage. However, the link directs the recipient to a website controlled by the fraudster and designed to capture your banking details.

A relatively new attack vector, social media offers several ways for criminals to trick people. Fake URLs; cloned websites, posts, and tweets; and instant messaging (which is essentially the same as smishing) can all be used to persuade people to divulge sensitive information or download malware.

However, scammers are adept at hijacking responses and asking the customer to provide their personal details. They are seemingly doing this to facilitate some form of compensation, but it is instead done to compromise their accounts.

Here in the Philippines there are all kinds of scams and phishing attacks, the most common being SMS message to random phone numbers saying they won some money, or they have an investment opportunity. All of which are used to get personal information and try to con them out of money. I do believe they also try fake website clones to phish user information.

Yes, this such example is what has lead me to this article, in need of educating myself to be one step ahead of how these scammers have been trying to get me to bite every day relentlessly! How can I stop them from their messaging me?

Your article is highly relevant and informative in the current age where cyber-attacks are on the rise and the security of our sensitive information is unpredictable. The tips are very useful and informative. I agree with the fact that, through proper education, awareness programmers and adopting cyber security services, these cyber attacks can be reduced to a large extent. Keep on updating similar reliant articles.

As technology advances, hackers and cybercriminals will find new phishing techniques to steal sensitive data. To protect yourself from an inevitable phishing attempt, follow this comprehensive guide to the most common types of phishing attacks used today.

A phishing attack is a type of cyber attack that uses social engineering tactics to steal sensitive information from victims. Most successful attacks trick users into opening malicious links or files by appearing to come from a reputable source. Phishing attacks are often used in conjunction with malware attacks to cripple the user or organization further.

Behind every successful phishing attack, a threat actor has studied user behavior to identify the easiest route to stealing information and data. Nearly every type of phishing attack requires a user to click a link or open a file to provide entry into a system or automatically download malicious software. Cybercriminals have become experts at crafting seemingly harmless, targeted attacks to exploit unsuspecting users.

Learning basic cybersecurity practices is the best way to protect and prevent phishing attacks. Practicing safe web surfing, data security, email security, and recognizing different types of phishing scams can greatly reduce the risk of becoming a victim.

Phishing emails top this list as one of the oldest and most commonly used types of phishing attacks. Most attempts use emails to target individuals by pretending to come from a trustworthy sender. Dedicated hackers will copy the exact email format from a legitimate company and include a malicious link, document, or image file that can trick the user into "confirming" their personal information or automatically download malicious code.

Spear phishing attacks are a more targeted approach to email phishing that focuses on specific individuals and organizations. Using open-source intelligence (OSINT), criminals can gather publicly available information and target entire businesses or subdepartments. They may trick users into believing the email is an internal communication or from a trustworthy source due to access to personal information.

If spear phishing emails target specific groups or individuals, whaling is the practice of targeting high-level executives. Also known as CEO fraud, whaling attacks are typically much more sophisticated, relying on OSINT, plenty of research into the company's business practices, and even a deep dive into social media accounts. Because the goal is to successfully dupe the executive, the emails are usually extremely fluent in business communications with near-perfect English.

A business email compromise is similar to whaling, but instead of attempting to trick the executive, it impersonates them. Criminals will impersonate or obtain access to an executive email account with decision-making authority and send internal requests to lower-level employees.

In 2014, Omaha-based agriculture company Scoular became a victim of a BEC attack. The corporate controller, Keith McMurtry, received an email from his CEO asking for an immediate wire transfer to acquire a Chinese-based company. The email detailed a lawyer who would be in charge of the transaction, and McMurtry wired in total $17.2 million to an offshore account. However, the email was ultimately fraudulent, containing fake phone numbers and email addresses.

Voice phishing, also known as "vishing," is when a scammer calls your phone number in an attempt to steal information or money. New sophisticated technology allows criminals to spoof caller IDs and pretend to be from a trusted source. Typically, the caller will create a sense of urgency to appear authoritative and prevent the recipient from thinking clearly.

HTTPS (hypertext transfer protocol secure) phishing is a URL-based attack that attempts to trick users into clicking a seemingly safe link. HTTPS is the standard protocol for traffic encryption between browsers and websites and requires TSL/SSL certificates to be enabled. In the past, browsers could detect sites that did not have HTTPS enabled as the first line of protection against cybercrime.

Instead of sending fake emails, clone phishing takes a real email sent by an individual or company, copies it to near-identical levels, and resends it to the target with a new corrupted attachment or link. The email will appear as a resend and display at the top of the victim's inbox. In some cases, the phisher will use a fake but similar email, but more sophisticated hackers will spoof the email address to appear as if sent by a legitimate domain.

SMS phishing, or "smishing," is similar to vishing, but instead of calling, scammers will send SMS text messages with links or attachments. Because personal phone numbers are generally less accessible to the public, individuals tend to trust text messages more. However, with today's smartphones, it's just as easy for hackers to steal personal data through text message URLs.

Although most people have an ad or pop-up blocker installed on their web browsers, hackers can still embed malware on websites. They may come as notification boxes or look like legitimate ads on a web page. Anyone that clicks on these pop-ups or ads will become infected with malware.

Aside from email, social media has become a popular attack vector for phishing attacks. With so much personal information displayed through social media, attackers can easily use social engineering attacks to access sensitive data. Billions of people around the world use platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and LinkedIn to network, which also increases the risk of phishing attempts.

These attacks usually involve a link that can send you to malicious websites to steal important information. In some cases, a scammer will befriend you in an attempt to steal money from you by pretending to be in trouble.

Attackers can take social media phishing to another level by posing as customer support staff in an angler phishing attack. The scammers will create a fake account and contact a disgruntled user they found through comments or posts on a social media account.

During the interaction, the scammer offers assistance after verifying a few personal details and then provides a link to help resolve the issues. Of course, the link contains malware and the attacker has successfully exploited another victim.

An evil twin phishing attack creates an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot access point that baits unsuspecting users into connecting. Once connected, all inbound and outbound data can be intercepted, including personal data or financial information. Hackers can also prompt the users to visit a fake website portal in hopes the user will provide valuable authentication details.

Evil twin phishing attacks are most common in public areas with free Wi-Fi, like coffee shops, libraries, airports, or hotels. The best way to prevent becoming an evil twin phishing target is to use a virtual private network (VPN) while using public Wi-Fi.

Attackers will create an entirely fake website in a website spoofing attempt to steal your personal information. A well-made fake website will contain the same elements as the original, including logos, text, colors, and functionality. Finance, healthcare, and social media websites are commonly spoofed because they often contain your most important information.

Email spoofing is when a scammer creates an entirely fake email domain to try and fool users into believing they are legitimate. To avoid detection, the attackers can edit the header of the email to include the name of a legitimate domain in hopes that the targeted user won't check the domain address where it was actually sent from. Because there is no domain verification under the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP), so attackers can spoof emails easily.

Phishers can also choose to hide the sender's address to display only the name. They may try to use a real name that the targeted user will recognize so that they'll open the email. When the attacker combines both a real name and the legitimate domain name in the header, it can easily trick unsuspecting users.

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