Phishing Attack

 What is Phishing Attack?

In the cyberworld there are number of attacks are happening on daily basis, which costs data breach that contains passwords, date of birth, contact number, email-id's and many more things. Phishing attack is one of them, in this article we will understand about phishing attack and how you became the target and how to be aware of these attacks.

Phishing attack is a attack in which attacker sends you a fraudulent email, text messages or links that are looks very official but they are send by the fake mobile number or fake email addresses. These fake emails, text messages are to trick people to share their sensitive information such as credit card details, passwords and other personal data. These fake messages and emails looks like they are related to banks, government agencies or some well known companies. They may also contains fake website links that designed same as real one's so that people enter their information like login credentials. This attack is mostly effective when these are well designed and targeted people are not aware/familiar with warning signs. Below picture shows the phishing attack via email.

Legitimate companies never told you do something with your parcel. Their delivery members will call you only. This kind of email will forced you to visit their website and enter your credential then you will captured. 

Now, let's understand how phishing attack works. It works in several steps :

1. Planning : Attackers plan and prepare the phishing attacks, which include to whom they are targeting ( Target audience), by how they are targeting (via E-mail, text messages or website link). Accordingly they move further.

2. Sending the message : After planning, the attackers send the messages or email to their target audience. This can be done through a mass emailing campaign or by targeting specific individuals. 

3. Baiting : The attacks gives greed to the target to clicking on the links, attachments or text messages. This may involve threatening to target or impulsive urgency on this message. 

4. Harvesting sensitive information : If the target falls on the trap and click on the link or open attachments, then attackers get the sensitive information such as login credentials or financial information. The information enter by the user is collected the attackers.

5. Using stolen information  : Once attacker get the information they used to login into your account to gain access, steal your identity and may be using this identity they commit crime. 

Now, the question arrived how do you know that which one is fraud and which one is real ones. So, there is shortcut or hard and fast rule to know that you can only know about these fraud by awareness. Once you get messages, emails, email attachments or links just wait for some time before click on it because most of the time they very triggering. 

For make payment always go for valid apps or websites. To check any information go to official website type and get the information not by just clicking on any link.

So, this article might help you to understand about Phishing Attack and also help you not to become a target.