Common Phishing Attacks Types
More than half (58 percent) of respondents stated their organizations had seen an increase in phishing attacks in the past year. Despite that increase, most companies didn’t feel prepared to protect themselves against phishing scams. Indeed, a slight majority (52 percent) stated they were “not confident” in their executives’ ability to successfully spot a phishing scam.
The most common type of phishing scam, deceptive phishing refers to any attack by which fraudsters impersonate a legitimate company and attempt to steal people’s personal information or login credentials. Those emails frequently use threats and a sense of urgency to scare users into doing the attackers’ bidding
Not all phishing scams lack personalization – some use it quite heavily. For instance, in spear phishing scams, fraudsters customize their attack emails with the target’s name, position, company, work phone number and other information in an attempt to trick the recipient into believing that they have a connection with the sender.
As users become more savvy to traditional phishing scams, some fraudsters are abandoning the idea of “baiting” their victims entirely. Instead, they are resorting to pharming – a method of attack which stems from domain name system (DNS) cache poisoning.
While some phishers no longer bait their victims, others have specialized their attack emails according to an individual company or service. Take Dropbox, for example. Millions of people use Dropbox every day to back up, access and share their files. It’s no wonder, therefore, that attackers would try to capitalize on the platform’s popularity by targeting users with phishing emails.
The most common type of phishing scam, deceptive phishing refers to any attack by which fraudsters impersonate a legitimate company and attempt to steal people’s personal information or login credentials. Those emails frequently use threats and a sense of urgency to scare users into doing the attackers’ bidding
Not all phishing scams lack personalization – some use it quite heavily. For instance, in spear phishing scams, fraudsters customize their attack emails with the target’s name, position, company, work phone number and other information in an attempt to trick the recipient into believing that they have a connection with the sender.
As users become more savvy to traditional phishing scams, some fraudsters are abandoning the idea of “baiting” their victims entirely. Instead, they are resorting to pharming – a method of attack which stems from domain name system (DNS) cache poisoning.
While some phishers no longer bait their victims, others have specialized their attack emails according to an individual company or service. Take Dropbox, for example. Millions of people use Dropbox every day to back up, access and share their files. It’s no wonder, therefore, that attackers would try to capitalize on the platform’s popularity by targeting users with phishing emails.
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