Spear phishing evolves
- TAGS:phishing, spear phishing
- IT TOPICS:Cybercrime & Hacking
First came phishing, targeted at the masses.
Then came spear phishing, targeted at executives and other employees in possession of trade secrets.
Now, as Roger Grimes recently described it over at InfoWorld, spear phishing has evolved.
In the good old days, there was a fighting chance of detecting scam emails. Phishing attacks either sent the victim to a bad website or tried to coax the victim into opening an infected attachment, be it a PDF file, an EXE or another file type.
Now, according to Grimes:
...phishing writers are now creating emails that do not contain any obvious malicious links. They don't ask users to visit bogus Websites or to install unexpected software. Rather, they attempt to fool a user or system admin into opening up holes in the company's network defenses.
It's an interesting article, even if the specific example is not one that would apply to many people.
Forewarned is forearmed.
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