What is Spear Phishing?
Let's find out Spear Phishing meaning, definition in crypto, what is Spear Phishing, and all other detailed facts.
Spear phishing is a cyberattack targeting a specific victim using personal information acquired from social media or other digital sources. Spear phishing attacks are personalized based on the interests of the victim and use targeted tactics to gain their trust, making this type of threat more dangerous than mass phishing attempts.
Spear phishing attacks are often targeted at specific organizations and their employees to cause disruption to the business and damage the company's reputation. Scammers may send emails pretending to be high-level employees inquiring about personal details in an attempt to breach the system.
Moreover, spear phishing emails often contain malware that infects the computer and steals recorded data. If the target is an organization, the malware may spread through the entire internal system, corrupting sensitive work information.
There are methods to detect whether a suspicious email is a spear phishing attempt, as well as strategies on how to avoid being targeted altogether.
Since these emails are targeted, it’s possible that the attacker already has access to some personal information, such as the victim’s address or phone number. Therefore, you should avoid giving out more personal data to unknown parties.
If a spear phishing is targeting a specific company, the attacker may pretend to be a customer or a supplier – a party that would reliably have contact with the organization in question. This can be harder to detect, particularly if the victim does not have frequent contact with legitimate representatives.
- Organizations should raise awareness of phishing campaigns and provide education programs for employees. The education should concern data protection, security and privacy measures, and ways to detect suspicious emails;
- Organizations should ensure that the email services used are secure and able to easily identify scam and phishing attempts, as well as other malicious attacks.
- Users should always create a backup of their data stored in an external device, such as a USB or in cloud storage;
- All software should be up-to-date to reduce the possibility of system vulnerabilities. Older versions of the software are easier for hackers to breach as they may not contain security updates and patches.