Phishing

In computer science phishing is the most sophisticated cyberattack in which

masquerading of digital communication especially emails and websites is done in
order to gather the confidential login information of recipients is extracted.
Information such as login details, credit card number and personal information. It is
the most fatal kind of cyberattack which is inherited in the client-server
communication since early 1990s. The Phishing is the outcome of social engineering
where the data is gathered from social networks such as target’s company name his
close circle group and that is used to send disguised emails or host a complete clone
website. Now the attacker has the complete information about his targets
commitments within a week or two he clones the email which was supposed to arrive
day after tomorrow delivers today itself the innocent recipient considered it as the
communication from his company and responds to it without knowing that it going
to expose his confidential information to the hackers who have set up a fool proof
plan to target him in specific. The vulnerability, scalability and cosmopolitan
approach of phishing makes it most popular form of cyberattack in the history of
computer science. Phishing is the art of getting disguised and here the most
complexity lies to deliver clone emails in the recipient’s inbox making him respond
with brutal consequences of aftermath. The mapping of person needs and wants to
the clone emails creates the link between hacker and user unanimously.

Types of phishing:

 Spear Phishing: This kind of phishing has the high probability of success as the
target is specific and all attacking attempts are made to him only with full
preparations.
 Whaling: It carries more advantage then spear phishing because its targets are high
executives of enterprises so that the attack must be quite efficient with all odds
against the target.
 Clone Phishing: In decent emails containing attachments are cloned to a complete
new one and send to the recipient without his knowledge the attachment is replaced
with the malicious software.

Examples of Phishing:

 State sponsored phishing attacks: These phishing attacks are backed up by sate in
every aspect and causing harm to many businesses because they are totally planned
attacks which stealthily pull out highly confidential information of different
businesses. It is one of the hidden tactics to survive and sustain in the highly
competitive marketplace.
 Facebook email scam: Most terrifying aspect of this scam is the cyber criminals
have flawlessly created the value proposition of it in no time if you land up on this
clone of social networking site for sure malware is getting downloaded rather than
community data.
 The massive phishing attack: In 2009 FBI called it with a bizarre name the massive
phishing cyber threat one of the most insidious in nature ever conducted on the globe
was probed by the agency and found that official looking emails from fake hosts
were send to clients which resembles their individual banks tampering with the
private account details giving them entire access.
 The disguised email of Walter Stephan: His tenure at FACC the enterprise that
manufactures aerospace parts for Boeing and Airbus was extreme disaster he made
a loss of maximum amount of money in a single phishing attack. Attackers faked
 his email address and made a deal of $47 million as the cost of project with
counterparts.
 The Ukranian power grid attack: Zero Days a sci fi documentary film based this
event one of the most planned, intelligent, complex and stealthy attack on the Iranian
nuclear power plant. A single malicious software tremendously increased the
rotation speed of the centrifuges which produce the nuclear grade uranium for the
country defenses. One of the most accurate and precise attack got accomplished
merely just by a simple virus that got into the system and corrupted the
programmable logic machines which controls the rotation speed of centrifuges as a
result the velocity got unnoticeably increased damaging the entire centrifuge section
and bullying the whole nuclear plant.

Reference:

 “7 Phishing Attack Examples That Caused Businesses Major Harm” (Rob Starr, 19-
Sept-2018)

https://smallbiztrends.com/2018/09/phishing-attack-examples.html

 “The Top 5 Phishing Scams in History – What you Need to Know” (Brad, July-
2018)

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.phishprotection.com/blog/the-top-5-
phishing-scams-in-history-what-you-need-to-know/amp/