What is a Phishing? How to Prevent Phishing Attacks?

Cybercriminals use multiple techniques for their attacks. One technique to carry out this is “phishing”. What exactly is phishing, and how can we prevent it? Even though it’s a conventional tactic, criminals apply it significantly while developing and using new variants.

What is Phishing?

Phishing is a social engineering attack where the attacker contacts a person pretending to be a representative of a trustworthy organization to deceive them into releasing critical confidential private information about themselves or their organizations or even downloading malicious software like ransomware.

The most exciting information for fraudsters includes your bank account details and password for accessing company networks.

How Is Phishing Carried Out?

Phishers can target anyone who has internet access or uses mobile phones. A phishing scam is an email message sent through some social media platform or other electronic channels.

Public assets, especially social networks, enable phishers to know more about past work history and life experiences concerning their victims. These resources are meant to source information on the potential victim, such as name, career, email address, other hobbies, and leisure activities. With this information at hand, the phisher can then come up with a trusted fake message.

The victim typically receives emails that seem like emails from a reputable person or business. Malicious attachments or links to malicious websites are used to carry out attacks.

Attackers frequently create fraudulent websites that seem run by reliable organizations, such as the victim’s bank, place of employment, or university. Attackers try to obtain sensitive data through these websites, such as payment details, usernames, and passwords.

Some phishing emails may include poor wording and make improper use of layouts, fonts, and logos, which might lead to misspellings. On the other hand, a lot of fraudsters are improving their ability to create authentic emails and use professional marketing techniques to test and improve their effectiveness.

Tips to Identify Phishing Attacks

• Urge you to click on a malicious payment link.
• Declare that you are eligible for a fraudulent government return on investment.
• Make a fraudulent complaint that you have seen strange activities or login attempts.
• Make fake coupons available for free stuff.
• Declare that something is wrong with your payment details or account.
• Ask you to verify any unnecessary financial or personal information.
• Attach fake invoices that are not identified.

Types of Phishing Attacks

Online criminals never stop refining their phishing techniques and developing new schemes. The following are examples of common phishing attack types:

Spear-phishing Attacks

These are aimed at specific people or businesses. To more effectively portray the message as genuine, these attacks typically use information explicitly obtained about the victim.

Besides using the victim’s name, place of residence, or other personal information, spear phishing emails may refer to managers or coworkers at the victim’s company.

Voice Phishing

This phishing happens over voice-based media, such as voice-over IP (vishing) or regular phone service. Speech synthesis software is used in this kind of fraud to make voicemails alerting the victim to unusual activity in a credit or bank account.

Also Read: Phishing Vs Vishing – The Key Differences Explained

The victim’s account credentials are compromised when the caller asks them to answer to confirm their identity.

Smishing, or SMS Phishing

This phishing attack targets mobile devices and employs text messaging to trick victims into installing malware or disclosing account details. Typically, the victim is requested to send an email, contact an email number, or click on a link.

Next, the attacker requests personal information from the victim. Since mobile devices can shorten related connections, this attack is more challenging to detect.

Whaling Attacks

These spear phishing attacks go after top executives in an organization to take significant amounts of private information. Since using information related to or specific to a target increases the likelihood of the attack being successful, attackers thoroughly investigate their victims to craft a more authentic message.

The phishing letter frequently looks to be an executive order to approve a sizable payment to a vendor, but, in reality, the payment would be made to the attackers because a whaling attack usually targets an employee with the authority to authorize payments.

Pharming

This kind of phishing attack uses DNS cache poisoning to divert visitors from a trustworthy website to a fraudulent one. Phishing aims to deceive people into entering their login credentials on a fraudulent website.

Clone Phishing Attacks

These attacks use authentic emails sent via email and include links or attachments. Attackers replicate, or clone, the authentic email and change emails or files attached to malicious ones. It is common for victims to be duped into opening malicious attachments or clicking on dangerous links.

Attackers who have gained access to the system of a different victim frequently employ this tactic. In this instance, the attacker’s email communications from a known and trustworthy sender to the victims by using their control over a single system inside the company.

Evil Twin Attacks

It happens when malevolent actors attempt to fool consumers into joining a fraudulent wireless network that imitates a genuine access point. The attackers establish a cloned hotspot with the same name as the original network, but it emits a different radio signal.

Attackers obtain access to any data transmitted to or from the victim’s devices, including user IDs and passwords, when the victim establishes a connection with the evil twin network. Using fake prompts, attackers can also use this channel to target victim devices.

How to Prevent Phishing Attacks?

To prevent and mitigate phishing attacks, consider the following recommendations:

Turn two-factor Authentication on and Create Secure Passwords

It is recommended that all accounts have complex, unique passwords and that password sharing be avoided. Every account should use two-factor authentication. Since a second verification step is needed, this adds an extra degree of security.

Train Personnel

Encouraging staff to follow safe practices is essential to preventing phishing attacks. All staff members and interested parties should receive training from their organizations regarding the types of phishing attacks, their effects, and ways to stay compliant. This knowledge of security serves as a human barrier.

Constant awareness training is necessary, using interesting resources like educational films and visual aids. Every employee should follow specific procedures to assess whether a message is authentic or suspect.

Identify What is considered a Phishing Scam

Although there is a constant development in phishing attack techniques, certain traits can be recognized if you know what to look for. You can find a lot of websites that will update you on the most recent phishing attacks and their unique identifiers.

Your chances of preventing an attack increase with the speed at which you learn about the most recent attack techniques and impart them to your users through frequent security awareness training.

Get Supportive anti-phishing Add-ons

Today’s browsers allow you to download add-ons that identify telltale indicators of a fraudulent website or warn against well-known phishing sites. Installing this on every device in your company makes sense because they are typically entirely free.

Find out What Psychological Triggers Exist

Every social engineering attack takes advantage of human psychology to get past the victims’ innate apprehension, including:

They inflate emotions and create a false sense of urgency to confuse their victims.

Taking advantage of people’s natural desire for reciprocity by making them feel obligated or

Relying on conditioned reactions to authority by appearing to give commands from higher-ranking individuals.

Keep an Eye out for Update Messages

Getting many update notices can be annoying, and you should ignore or postpone them altogether. Avoid doing this. Security updates and patches are published for a purpose, usually to fix vulnerabilities in security and stay current with contemporary cyberattack techniques.

If you don’t upgrade your browser, known flaws that could have been easily avoided could put you in danger of phishing attempts.

Passwords should be changed Frequently

If you have any online accounts, make it a practice to change your passwords frequently to keep an attacker from getting unrestricted access. Your accounts may have been compromised without you knowing; therefore, changing your passwords regularly will help keep criminals out and avoid further attempts.

Resist the urge to Click on Unwanted Pop-ups

Besides being annoying, pop-ups are frequently connected to malware in phishing attempts. These days, most browsers let you download and set up free ad-blocking software, which will automatically stop the most dangerous pop-ups.

Don’t be tempted to click even if you can get past the ad blocker! You should always look for an “x” in one corner, as pop-ups occasionally trick you about where the “Close” button is.

Never Provide your Details to an Unprotected Website

It is not advisable to download files or enter sensitive information on a website if the URL does not begin with “https” or if a closed padlock icon is not displayed next to the URL. Even if websites lacking security certificates might not be used for phishing schemes, it’s still preferable to be secure than sorry.

Be Cautious while Visiting Sites or Opening Emails

Be vigilant by clicking links or opening emails, especially email senders you need to familiarize yourself with. Downloading attachments should only be done when necessary and from reliable sources. Even if you know the sender, it’s usually not a good idea to click on a link in an email or instant email.

Hovering your cursor over the link to verify that the destination is right is the very least that you should be doing. A sophisticated phishing attack may include a destination URL that appears to be a carbon replica of the actual website and is intended to capture keystrokes or collect credit card or login information.

Perform Tests for Phishing Attacks

Security teams can assess the success of security awareness training initiatives and aid end users in understanding attacks by using simulated phishing attack testing.

Your staff members should undergo frequent testing to replicate actual phishing assaults, even if they are skilled at identifying questionable communications. Cyberattack simulations need to adapt to the ever-changing threat scenario.

Wrap up

Phishing is a tactic that malicious hackers like because of its low cost and tremendous potential, even if it might not considered a hack. Phishing is a social engineering attack that is hard to fight against.

Still, the risks can be identified and minimized with meticulously planned security initiatives such as the abovementioned prevention techniques, Email Signing Certificates, Verified Mark Certificates and other security precautions.

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