5 Categories of phishing attacks you must be watchful about in 2019

categories of phishing

Phishing is one of the most aggressively growing cybercrime. Scammers infiltrate the targeted mailbox with malicious emails and entice them into clicking the malicious links. With the increasing level of sophistication, the impact of phishing attacks is becoming more pronounced as the victims expect no foul play. Phishing was first flagged by AOL (America Online) and has evolved at a much higher pace. Attackers today can get access to highly confidential data like SSN number, account passwords, credit card numbers and more with well-planned sophisticated attacks.

The phishers sell the data to the communities that intend to misuse the people information.  Phishing may not be a one-time attack. If the victim is not aware of the infection, the malware may keep collection of personal information from the user’s system incessantly.  And, this is why it becomes even more important to identify the kind of threat a user is exposed to.

Let us look at the 5 generic categories of phishing attacks:

Vishing

A phishing attack that is executed over a phone call is called vishing (voice + phishing). The scammers collect data from the targets of social media accounts and online activity. They impersonate a friend, a relative or a salesperson from a reputed financial institution and try to extract credentials and information that can be used to login to the bank accounts. The people need to be aware of such attacks and must always verify the caller’s information before handing over anything personal.

Smishing

SMS phishing is the oldest, easiest and the most-simple type of phishing attack. The users receive a link over an SMS. The urgency of the SMS text entices the users to click on the link and are directed to a fake page that could demand their credentials.   

Search Engine Phishing

Another very common type of phishing. The fake webpages that look very much similar to the branded website are created and the search engine is phished to make the fake URL rank higher than the original one for the specific keyword.

The resemblance is so striking that the user’s login with their credentials without giving it a second thought hence compromising the security of the high-confidential information.

Spear Phishing

A well-evolved and sophisticated attack that is very personal in nature is known as spear phishing.  It does not require the scammer to send millions of emails but the attack is strategically planned to effect a particular user.

These well-orchestrated attacks have a higher impact on targeted users. The attackers do meticulous research about the targeted user from their social media activity and send them highly personalized emails that entice the user to click and get lured to malicious links.     

Whaling

Whaling and spear phishing are quite similar in nature. The only difference between the two is that whaling attacks target high-ranking employees. The targets are generally CEO’s and the league.

In whaling attacks, fraudulent emails appear in high-profile mailboxes in a highly targeted fashion. While the source might look too trustworthy, it would require best email phishing protection to identify such attacks as the email looks too legitimate. Attacker email often used the logos, email ids, and formats that are quite similar to the actual brand. Whaling can be categorized as a special form of spear phishing attack targeted to individuals rather than a group.

How to stop phishing attacks?

Every category of phishing attack has multiple type of attacks that range from email spoofing, brand impersonation, URL phishing, homograph attack, subdomain attack, in-session phishing, search engine the attack, website spoofing, scripting, man-in-the-middle attack, clone phishing, image phishing and many more. How do you plan to train your employees to identify these many types of attacks?

Hence the basic steps need to be taken at your IT infrastructure level.  The email network requires to be protected with multiple levels of best email phishing protection. The solution must be scalable and must be interoperable across multiple email systems. Nowadays cloud runs anti-phishing solutions are making stringer strides in the market because they can be deployed anywhere to ensure higher endurance to the email networks against phishing attacks. They are quick to be deployed and easy to use by the employees so that the high-profile whale attacked can also be circumvented.