While the number of people falling for sending personal information to the crown prince of Nigeria in hopes of receiving his promised wealth and riches seems to be dropping, phishing remains a major issue. In fact, the number of phishing campaigns pursued by hackers around the world increased 65% in the last year.
What exactly is phishing? Hackers mimic the emails, forms, and websites of legitimate companies to lure people into providing their private, personal information, like credit cards numbers, social security information, account logins, and personal identifiers. The victim typically doesn't realize they've been compromised until long after the event, and oftentimes only after their identify or finances are affected. In the past, an attack was carried out relatively quickly. As soon as the victim gave up their information, the hacker moved in and stole money from the compromised bank account. Today, it's often more lucrative for hackers to sell that information on the Dark Web, resulting in longer-lasting, even more devastating attacks.
Have you ever gotten an email from your bank or medical office asking you to update your information online or confirm your username and password? Maybe a suspicious email from your boss asking you to execute some wire transfer. That is most likely a phishing attempt, and you're among the 76% of businesses that were victims of a phishing attack in the last year.
Phishing is the most widely used method for spreading ransomware and has increased significantly since the birth of major ransomware viruses like Petya and Wannacry. Anyone can become a victim of phishing, and, in turn, ransomware attacks; however, hackers have begun targeting organizations that are more likely to pay the ransoms. Small businesses, education, government, and healthcare often, unfortunately, don't have valid data backups, so they are unable to roll back to a pre-ransomed version of their data. Instead, they must pay their way out or cease to exist. Outside of ransom costs, victims of phishing campaigns are often branded as untrustworthy, and many of their customers turn to their competitors, resulting in even greater financial loss.
Why are effective phishing campaigns so rampant despite public awareness from media coverage?
Volume: There are nearly 1.5 million new phishing sites created every month, according to Webroot Threat Report. There are now even Phishing as a Service companies, offering phishing attacks in exchange for payment. One Russian website, "Fake Game," claims over 61,000 subscribers and 680,000 credentials stolen.
They Work: Over 30% of phishing messages get opened, and 12% of targets click on the embedded attachments or links, according to the Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report. In short, these hackers have gotten good at looking really legitimate.
They're simple to Execute: New phishing campaigns and sites can be built by sophisticated hackers in a matter of minutes. While we think there are far more legitimate ways to be earning money, these individuals have made a living out of duplicating their successful campaigns.
How do you protect yourself from a phishing attack? Now that you have an deeper understanding of what phishing is, check out our last blog that will help you learn How to Spot a Phishing Attack.
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