What Is Spear Phishing and How to Protect Yourself From It
This is just one of the many examples of phishing attempts that hackers and other cybercriminals make when trying to obtain personally identifiable or sensitive information from unsuspecting people.
Phishing attacks are common, but there is a more targeted type called Spear Phishing. We will explain what it is, how it works and how you can prevent such an attack.
What is phishing
In general, phishing comes in a variety of forms, including spoofed social media messages or fraudulent emails, and so on, with a link to a fake website containing malicious code and several threats. The main objective of the attacker is to get you to click on the link and enter your details so that he can steal or download malware.
Nowadays, however, phishing attempts are more sophisticated because sites containing malware and other threats look and work almost the same as the actual sites you visit.
Spear phishing is one of those sophisticated but highly targeted attacks against certain companies or individuals.
Attackers collect sensitive and personal information about their targets, which increases the chances of a successful plan. Yes, it is very easy for senior people and senior executives of large companies to be victims of such attacks, thus giving access to funds or to the corporate network.
How phishing works
Spear phishing is different from other forms of phishing because, in this case, the author already has first-hand information about the target just before its attack.
Fraudsters present themselves as trusted parties and encourage you to share your personal or sensitive information with them. It's not that difficult for someone to find information about you online, especially on social media.
With your information in hand, for example, your residential or tax information or details of your workplace, the authors will try to trust you and see how far they can go with the scam.
Because the information they use appears to be legitimate, you are more likely to download attachments or click on the links they sent to you. Some of these links lead to fake websites that ask for a password or that contain malware and trackers.
Other attempts of this type may ask you to send money, enter your bank or credit card details or your social security number.
When phishing scammers target individuals, they tend to pretend to be trusted people, telling you that you owe money, have unpaid contributions, or that your account will be closed / frozen soon. They can also offer lucrative offers to allow you to click or download something.
Phishing attacks targeted at businesses are also very targeted and generally target mailboxes. The scammer masquerades as a corporate executive and asks an employee to transfer funds to the fraudster's account.
Sometimes clicked links or downloaded attachments can open your devices, giving attackers remote access to the system which helps them steal your information, or completely disables your antivirus software to not receive threat alerts.
How to protect yourself from phishing
According to a study by Intel in 2015, 97% of people can't identify phishing emails – that's a huge number. Fortunately, there are practical steps you can take to protect yourself from spear phishing and related attempts, such as:
- Watch what you post on the Internet. Check the amount of personal information you have posted on your social media pages and other public sites. You can also configure your privacy settings to limit what other users can see.
- Update your software regularly, because the updates come with security patches that protect you and your devices from attack. It is good practice here to activate automatic updates for your regularly used software and applications.
- Just click on the links you know and ignore suspicious links or emails. Many spear phishing scammers mask link destinations using legitimate URLs on anchor texts, so you are prompted to click and download malware.
- Use smart passwords. These can be variations of passwords on the accounts you have, which protects your accounts from being attacked simultaneously in case you use a single password for all.
- Carefully check all email addresses claiming to be from your "friend", "boss" or "colleague", especially those asking you to send personal information such as passwords or others information.
- Use a data blocker when using your devices in public places.
- If you run a business or organization, have a data protection program that informs users about best practices and how to implement data protection to prevent data loss during such attacks. It is also advisable to have data loss prevention software to prevent unauthorized access to sensitive company data.
Counterfeit phishing attacks
Unlike the usual phishing attacks that play on your gullibility, Spear phishing plays on your confidence. We hope you now know what it is and how you can prevent yourself or your business from such attacks.
Then: One of the most exhausting and devastating threats of our time is ransomware. Among the most recent is the Snatch Ransomware threat. Our next article covers what it is, how it works and how you can remove it if you are a victim.