Phishing Attack..!

                           

                 
                    Hacking into someone's account doesn't necessarily require high-end programming or complex hacking tools either. In most of the cases the victim himself helps the hacker with the confidential or necessary information to hack into his account.

                     For an Hacker there are many easy ways of getting victim's password, like social engineering, shoulder surfing and the one which I will be explaining today is PHISHING..! 

              The term Phishing can be explained as attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. Communications purporting to be from popular social web sites, auction sites, banks, online payment processors or IT administrators are commonly used to lure unsuspecting public. 

              Phishing emails may contain links to websites that are infected with malware. Phishing is typically carried out by email spoofing or instant messaging, and it often directs users to enter details at a fake website whose look and feel are almost identical to the legitimate one. Phishing is an example of social engineering techniques used to deceive users, and exploits the poor usability of current web security technologies. 

              Recent article in Hindustan Times stated that...

           "With 4.08% of the world’s phishing attacks targeting India in 2013, it was the sixth most targeted nation after United States (30.8%), Russia (11.2%), Germany (9.32%), Japan (6.24%) and United Kingdom (5.20%), a report by leading Internet security firm Kaspersky revealed." 

                            So how can we outsmart these hackers? Well, as I said, hackers nowadays are too smart and come out with innovative ideas of stealing data. There are few things that you need to keep in mind while accessing emails.

 

What does a phishing email message look like?

Here is an example of what a phishing scam in an email message might look like.

·                             Spelling and Grammar: If you are supposed to get an email from gmail or facebook or any of the renowned organizations, you wont find even a single spelling or grammar mistake in those emails. Such MNCs have a dedicated team of highly trained professionals to check on quality of the service or notifications given to their customers. If you notice such silly mistakes in an email, it might be a scam. 

·                         Cautiously click on any link in emails: If you see a link in a suspicious email message, don't click on it. Move your mouse on the link but don't click it, check if the address matches the link that was typed in the message. In the example below the link reveals the real web address, as highlighted by the red box here, in the status bar.

Such links not necessarily will navigate you to websites, it might also lead you to .exe files. Such files might install a malicious application or software on your computer.

·          

·                             Pressurize or terrorize you to give information: It is a common practice in phishing emails that the hacker threats you by saying that if you don't respond to this email with the required information your account would be treated as hacked and will not be functional after 24 hours or it will be permanently De-activated or deleted. 

·                             Spoofing company logo and graphics: As you must have seen in the example shown above, how genuine the page looks! It has all the logos and graphics to persuade you to believe that it is an original gmail login page. Apart from the 'Sign In' button all the other links and logos are real and functional!

• Dont forget to have a look at the domain name in the address bar too! The domains used by hackers are pretty deceiving. For example www.microsoft.com might be misinterpreted by:

§                     www.micrsoft.com

§                     www.micosoft.com

§                     www.mircosoft.com

Always keep this in mind...

"No service providers ever ask for your details...

...as they already have it!" 

.

Hope this post was informative and useful to you, if you think so please share and spread it amongst your loved ones so that no one falls prey to an Phishing attack!