• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Red Sift Blog

Red Sift Blog
  • redsift.com
  • Featured
  • Who are we?
  • Get in touch
You are here: Home / Email / The many guises of a phishing attack

The many guises of a phishing attack

by Clare Holmes
February 8, 2019August 17, 2022Filed under:
  • Cybersecurity
  • Email

News this week that highlighted the canny nature of scammers made us wonder whether we needed to start a glossary of phishing attacks. These attacks now come in many guises, and if you’re a computer user that isn’t privy to an underground network of caught-in-the-wild attack loggers, you may easily fall victim to one of the sophisticated methods that hackers employ to steal your data and money.

This is likely to be one of those reminders we roll out a couple of times a year to which we add the latest ludicrous phishing design. But for now, sit back and let your mind be boggled by some of the outrageous ways in which scammers are trying to dupe you into disclosing your information.

Phone and text scams

Before the dawn of the internet and mass computer usage, there were telephones with unwitting victims on the other end of an anonymous line. While cold-calling scams may be falling out of favor, smishing, or text scams are seeing a new lease of life, with instances of imitated banking, delivery confirmations, and even 2-FA texts increasingly being reported. How many times have you ‘confirmed’ your personal details to someone supposedly calling from your bank, the DVLA, or your insurance company? It’s easy for a hacker to fill in the gaps once you’ve handed over your date of birth and mother’s maiden name. And it’s just as easy to send a victim a text saying there has been unusual activity on their account – the victim calls the number in the oh-so-handy text notification and thinks they’ve got one over the fraudster. Uh oh.

Email impersonation

How easy it to change the lowercase letter ‘L’ for an uppercase letter ‘i’ so helpdesk@youremail.com becomes helpdesk@youremaiI.com – spot the difference? If you assume the sender is from a legitimate source, you’ll willingly handover your credit card details if they’ve offered a not-to-be-missed upgrade deal for example. More sophisticated scammers will actually spoof the sender’s email address, so even the most eagle-eyed email user won’t spot any issues with it. In this scenario you would need some clever tech to red flag imposters.  

Deceptive links

During the 2016 US presidential election, the legitimate URL, ‘accounts.google.com’ was cloned and the tweaked URL, ‘accounts-google.com’ was used to launch phishing attacks. Much like email impersonation, domains can be spoofed and lead victims to sites ready to harvest vital personal information.

Also, how many times have you looked at a shortened URL and thought ‘oh yes, I know exactly where that will take me’? No, me either.

Website cloning

Cross-site scripting (XSS) is a tactic used by many scammers to infect legitimate webpages with malicious scripts. This compromises the legitimate webpage without the user being aware – either by harvesting from that page or by a script-generated pop-up that requests user information.

Lost in translation

Recently, researchers uncovered that scammers were not satisfied with just spoofing domains, they’ve even started using Google Translate to translate the URL to shroud the scam further.

A ‘traditional’ phishing email is sent to the user, who unwittingly clicks on a link that takes them to a webpage with the Google Translate bar, which on mobile devices looks very much like the browser address bar. Victims log in with their credentials and the data harvested.

Easy, no?

Here at Red Sift, we automate BIMI and DMARC processes, making it easy to identify and stop phishing attacks. If you’re interested in learning more about how our platform can help your organization prevent email impersonation attacks and enable employees to spot email threats, then drop one of the team a note.

Get in touch

Share this:

  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Tagged:
  • attack
  • Phishing
  • Scam

Post navigation

Previous Post What is a DMARC record and how do I add it to my DNS?
Next Post Data privacy and security: talk less, do more

Primary Sidebar

Subscribe to our blog and be the first to get updates!

Categories

  • AI
  • BEC
  • BIMI
  • Brand Protection
  • Coronavirus
  • Cybersecurity
  • Deliverability
  • DMARC
  • DORA
  • Email
  • Finance
  • Labs
  • News
  • OnINBOX
  • Partner Program
  • Red Sift Tools
  • Work at Red Sift
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • September 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • May 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • October 2016

Copyright © 2023 · Milan Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in