How Phishing works on the current cyber threat landscape

Phishing is a deceptive cyber strategy that capitalises on human psychology and technological vulnerabilities to steal sensitive information or spread malware.

Understanding how phishing works involves recognising the tactics employed by attackers. The majority of phishing attacks work in that they involve the creation of seemingly legitimate communication, such as emails, messages, or websites, which impersonate trusted entities like banks, social media platforms, or online retailers. They aim to gain the trust of the recipient to lure them into following the instructions they have provided.

 

Phishing works by deceiving a victim with authentic-looking forms of communication sent by an unknown sender who lures the victim into disclosing confidential information.

 

Phishing works by deceiving a victim with authentic-looking emails, SMS or other forms of communication sent by an unknown sender who lures the victim into disclosing personal or confidential information—often by using what looks like a convincingly real-looking website or web page.

These messages often contain urgent, pressing, crucial or enticing requests and offers, exploiting a sense of urgency or curiosity to prompt recipients into taking action. These include too-good-to-be-true promotions, savings, tax exemptions and rebates, as well as winnings, which require them to interact with the sender in order to claim or get the benefit they have luckily been entitled to.

How phishing links work is that they lead unsuspecting victims to fraudulent websites that closely mimic the appearance of genuine ones, and then tricking them into entering their personal information like passwords, banking information, or credit card details.

The goal of phishing scams is to deceive individuals into divulging sensitive data or inadvertently downloading malicious attachments, enabling attackers to gain unauthorised access to accounts or infect devices with malware.