Phishing attacks; a detailed study

While analysing the persisting threats, phishing stands out to be the biggest cyber threat. Every data breach that happens begins with a phishing mail. It is through this medium, people get affected by malware, ransomware and cyber frauds. A simple phishing attack can destroy a business, government institutions and even financial organizations. According to the census, 80% of the cyber-attacks reported these days occur due to phishing. Cyber criminals prefer phishing attacks due to its explicit versatility and effectiveness.

Out of phishing attacks, the most common one is the spear phishing. Other types of phishing attacks include angler phishing, smishing, whaling, brand impersonation and business email compromise.

Purpose

The major aim of phishing attack is to force the target to open a deceptive message which contains malware. Once they open the message, the malware lurks into their device and thereby compromising their personal data. Phishing attacks can be simple or complex, based on the target. In most of the cases, the hackers use social engineering techniques along with the information of the target collected from dark web. When it comes to deploying ransomware, the target just need to open the infected message. In other cases, the target will be forced to click a link or attachment which redirects them to an infected page from where the malware gets activated. In case of data leak, the redirected webpage will ask the target to enter his login credentials. In this way the hacker gets control over that account.

The origin of phishing attack was from 1990s, where a bank was attacked. The first advanced phishing attacks occurred on the AOL users where the hackers stole the password of the users to use them for conducting further cyber-crimes. In the late 2000s, a group of cyber criminals were found selling phishing softwares which were used to perform phishing campaigns. Year by year the phishing attacks got advanced and today it stands as a most common type of method used by the cyber hackers.

Happenings

• Twitter was once badly affected due to phishing attacks. The cyber hackers took control of the accounts of prominent users like Donald Trump and Elon Musk and used them to spread phishing scams promoting crypto currency. After a detailed investigation, the officials found that all this happened due to the leak of a single administration password.
• The Solar winds hack which occurred in 2020, where the Russian cyber criminals got hold of the data of government, business and other financial institutions. In this attack, the hackers successful set up a back door which leads to some of the most sensitive systems in US. Even today, the officials could not measure the impact of this attack. The major weapon used to launch this attack was phishing.

As per the statistics, in every 39 seconds, a phishing attack happens. The cyber criminals are seeing pandemic as a gift because when people were busy saving their lives from the deadly virus, the threat actors planned and executed cyber-attacks in which most of them were successful. While comparing to 2019, the phishing attack ratio has increased to 667% in 2020. Criminals are using the pandemic situation and from 2020, 18 billion Covid related scams were reported.

How does phishing attack work?

• First the hacker studies the target. He collects necessary informations to launch the attack.
• The threat actor tries to buy personal identifying information from any stolen database to carryout impersonation.
• He then creates an email from the impersonated account, which looks so genuine and lures the target to open them.
• The contents in the mail include some personalized data which he collected from dark web or some online markets.
• The message in the mail will not be a harmful or threating one, but a simple and a harmless one like from an association or a charity trust. Hackers often try to work out the centimence.
• The mail contains a link or attachment or PDF which is infected by malware.
• Once the target successfully opens them, the malware will get delivered and the payload will be generated.
• After this, the entire system comes under the control of the target. He can access each and every data in your device.

How to control phishing attacks?

• Have a good knowledge about phishing attacks and defend them in the ways possible.
• Never open suspicious links or attachments.
• Install a spam filter that notifies the presence of virus or malware.
• Always keep the systems and operating software up-to-date.
• Install strong and secure anti-virus solution.
• Install firewall to protect the networks.
• Encrypt sensitive informations.