Spear Phishing vs. Whaling

Since COVID-19, cyberattacks have increased at a faster rate than before. Cybercriminals are using different types of cyberattack techniques to gain access to organizations, which has disastrous effects such as unauthorized access, identity theft, money theft, etc., leading to a loss of reputation, depletion of customer trust, and financial losses for the organizations. Social engineering attacks are among the most frequent kinds of cyberattacks. They occur when an attacker misleads a victim into opening an email, instant message, or text message and clicking on a malicious link that inserts malware as part of a ransomware attack or exposes sensitive data.

What is Spear Phishing?

The spear phishing is a type of phishing attack that targets a specific person or organization. The attacker uses spear phishing to deceive the victim into clicking on malicious links, installing malicious programs, and allowing the attacker to retrieve all sensitive information from the target system or network.

In this type of attack, the attacker poses as a trusted individual and tricks the victim into clicking on a spoofed email or text message, which implements malicious code on the victim’s system and allows the attacker access to sensitive personal or professional information from the victim, such as names, contact numbers, mailing addresses, social security numbers, credit card numbers, and so on. The goal is to access classified information to assist future financial fraud or cybercrime.

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