What Is Phishing in Cyber Security? Techniques & Prevention Tips
Phishing attacks are a type of Social Engineering attacks that involve the cracking of human psychology. The social engineers often play with human emotions to exploit the user for their own financial and other benefits.
In today’s digital era, cybersecurity threats are evolving and growing like a virus. Their rapid growth is a big matter of concern for individuals and organizations. Phishing can be called the most deceptive and deceiving attack, which can trick individuals very efficiently.
Phishing attacks typically use text messages, fake calls, fraudulent websites, etc., to breach your privacy, and you end up sharing your personal and sensitive details.
The attackers pretend to be some trustworthy individual or a person of higher value, and they deceive individuals into giving up their personal and sensitive information.
What is the Psychology Behind the Phishing Attacks?
Before jumping into the technical aspects, let us find the answer to the psychology behind the phishing attacks. It is a type of cyber attack that works not just because of the software vulnerabilities, but mainly because of human psychology.
These attacks are built around the art of manipulation, and they specifically manipulate the trust and urgency of the individual. The attackers trick the user into reacting quickly before thinking about something, and the user reacts emotionally rather than rationally.
Phishing briefly plays on the following emotions:
- Fear (e.g., losing access to your bank account)
- Curiosity (e.g., “check out this invoice”)
- Greed (e.g., “you’ve won a gift card”)
- Authority (e.g., “the ceo requests the payment immediately”)
What are the Types of Phishing Attacks?
Some common types of phishing attacks are as follows:
- Email phishing- This is the most common type of phishing method in which attackers send a bulk of emails pretending to be from banks, social media platforms, or service providers. The email often includes a malicious link or attachment.
- Spear phishing- This is a kind of targeted phishing specially tailored according to a particular individual. It often uses their job titles, name, or personal interests. It can be an email that looks like it is from your boss, requesting documents or a money transfer.
- Whaling- It is a form of spear phishing that targets high-profile individuals or seniors like CEOs or CFOs. The attacks are more sophisticated and aim for high rewards.
- Smishing- It is basically an SMS based phishing in which the victim often receives a text message with a link or a number to call.
- Vishing- It is voice phishing, and the attacker often poses as a tech support or a bank employee offering you services and help.
- Clone phishing- In this type of phishing, the attacker copies a legitimate message that the victim has received in the past and replaces the original link with a malicious one.
How Does a Phishing Attack Work?
Phishing requires a strategic approach to manipulate the victim. Let’s break down a typical phishing attack:
- Investigation- the attacker investigates and gathers information about the victim (especially in spear phishing attacks)
- Crafting the bait- a convincing message is created with a malicious link that seems to be genuine.
- Delivery- the message is sent to the victim using text, email, or call.
- Engagement- the victim clicks on the link, downloads a file, or shares their details.
- Data exfiltration- the credentials or sensitive data are used incorrectly.
What are the Latest Trends in Phishing Attacks?
- AI phishing- This phishing is a latest type of phishing attack in which the attackers use artificial intelligence techniques to enhance and automate the phishing attacks. This makes them more scalable, convincing, and harder to detect. The AI tools can generate targeted emails for a specific individual in just a few minutes. They also lack grammatical errors, spelling errors, etc, which makes the message seem more genuine to the victim.
- Quishing- It is short for QR code phishing. It is a type of cyber attack that uses malicious QR codes to trick the victim into visiting fraudulent websites, downloading malware, or revealing sensitive details. It also relies upon other attacks, but rather than emails, texts, or calls, it uses QR codes.
- Hybrid vishing- Hybrid vishing combines voice phishing with other methods of phishing, such as email, SMS, or malicious websites, to trick the victim into sharing sensitive information or personal details.
How to Protect Yourself From Phishing?
- Be cautious with emails and messages- As most of the phishing attacks begin with emails and messages, it is important to spot the malicious ones. They usually contain generic greetings, spelling or grammatical errors, urgent language, unexpected links or attachments, etc. One should never click on such types of links, and if unsure, they can directly go to the official website for confirmation.
- Use strong and unique passwords- Weak or repetitive passwords can make your account more unsafe and an easy target for hackers. To make your account safer, you can try using unique passwords involving letters, numbers, and special characters. Also, one can consider using a password manager to store and generate passwords.
- Multi-factor authentication- One can enable multi-factor authentication in order to provide an extra layer of security to your accounts. Even if the attacker steals your password, he also requires a second factor to continue.
- Stay informed and aware- The phishing attacks are evolving rapidly with a great pace, so to be one step ahead of the attackers, we should also evolve rapidly and stay up to date on current scams. One should keep in mind what is Cyber Threat Intelligence and how to use it. Regular training sessions should be conducted so that the employees are well aware of the possible attacks.
- Keep devices and software updated- Updates and new software often include security patches that close vulnerabilities that phishing attacks may exploit. One should never ignore OS updates, browser updates, antivirus, and firewall definitions, etc.
- Use anti-phishing tools- Modern browsers and email services include anti-phishing tools, which are useful to protect yourself from phishing attacks.
Conclusion
Phishing attacks can be referred to as a modern-day virus that is evolving and enhancing itself from time to time. It has now become more important for individuals and organizations to be aware and ready for such attacks. The basic rule to stay safe is, if something feels off, then ignore it and verify before clicking on any link.