Phishing Attack ( Cyber Security )
What is a phishing attack
Phishing is a type of social engineering attack often
used to steal user data, including login credentials and credit card numbers.
It occurs when an attacker, masquerading as a trusted entity, dupes a victim
into opening an email, instant message, or text message. The recipient is then
tricked into clicking a malicious link,
which can lead to the installation of malware, the freezing of the system as
part of a ransomware attack or
the revealing of sensitive information.
An attack can have devastating results. For individuals, this
includes unauthorized purchases, the stealing of funds, or identify theft.
Moreover, phishing is often used to gain a foothold in corporate
or governmental networks as a part of a larger attack, such as an advanced
persistent threat (APT) event. In this latter scenario,
employees are compromised in order to bypass security perimeters, distribute
malware inside a closed environment, or gain privileged access to secured data.
An organization succumbing to such an attack typically sustains
severe financial losses in addition to declining market share, reputation, and
consumer trust. Depending on scope, a phishing attempt might escalate into a
security incident from which a business will have a difficult time recovering.
Phishing attack examples
The following illustrates a common phishing scam attempt:
·
A spoofed email ostensibly from myuniversity.edu is mass-distributed to as many faculty
members as possible.
·
The email claims that the user’s password is about to expire.
Instructions are given to go to myuniversity.edu/renewal to
renew their password within 24 hours.
Several things can occur by clicking the link. For example:
·
The user is redirected to myuniversity.edurenewal.com, a bogus
page appearing exactly like the real renewal page, where both new and existing
passwords are requested. The attacker, monitoring the page, hijacks the
original password to gain access to secured areas on the university network.
·
The user is sent to the actual password renewal page. However,
while being redirected, a malicious script activates in the background to
hijack the user’s session cookie. This results in a reflected
XSS attack, giving the perpetrator privileged access to the
university network.
Phishing techniques
Email phishing scams
Email phishing is a numbers game. An attacker sending out
thousands of fraudulent messages can net significant information and sums of
money, even if only a small percentage of recipients fall for the scam. As seen
above, there are some techniques attackers use
to increase their success rates.
For one, they will go to great lengths in designing phishing
messages to mimic actual emails from a spoofed organization. Using the same
phrasing, typefaces, logos, and signatures makes the messages appear
legitimate.
In addition, attackers will usually try to push users into action
by creating a sense of urgency. For example, as previously shown, an email
could threaten account expiration and place the recipient on a timer. Applying
such pressure causes the user to be less diligent and more prone to error.
Lastly, links inside messages resemble their legitimate
counterparts, but typically have a misspelled domain name or extra subdomains.
In the above example, the myuniversity.edu/renewal URL
was changed to myuniversity.edurenewal.com.
Similarities between the two addresses offer the impression of a secure link, making
the recipient less aware that an attack is taking place.
Spear phishing
Spear
phishing targets a specific person or enterprise, as opposed to
random application users. It’s a more in-depth version of phishing that
requires special knowledge about an organization, including its power
structure.
An attack might play out as follows:
- A
perpetrator researches names of employees within an organization’s
marketing department and gains access to the latest project invoices.
- Posing
as the marketing director, the attacker emails a departmental project
manager (PM) using a subject line that reads, Updated invoice for Q3
campaigns. The text, style, and included logo duplicate the organization’s
standard email template.
- A
link in the email redirects to a password-protected internal document,
which is in actuality a spoofed version of a stolen invoice.
- The
PM is requested to log in to view the document. The attacker steals his
credentials, gaining full access to sensitive areas within the
organization’s network.
By providing an attacker with valid login credentials, spear
phishing is an effective method for executing the first stage of an APT.
How to prevent phishing
Phishing attack protection requires steps be taken by both users
and enterprises.
For users, vigilance is key. A spoofed message often contains
subtle mistakes that expose its true identity. These can include spelling
mistakes or changes to domain names, as seen in the earlier URL example. Users
should also stop and think about why they’re even receiving such an email.
For enterprises, a number of steps can be taken to mitigate both
phishing and spear phishing attacks:
·
Two-factor
authentication (2FA) is the most effective method for
countering phishing attacks, as it adds an extra verification layer when
logging in to sensitive applications. 2FA relies on users having two things:
something they know, such as a password and user name, and something they have,
such as their smartphones. Even when employees are compromised, 2FA prevents
the use of their compromised credentials, since these alone are insufficient to
gain entry.
·
In addition to using 2FA, organizations should enforce strict
password management policies. For example, employees should be required to
frequently change their passwords and to not be allowed to reuse a password for
multiple applications.
·
Educational campaigns can also help diminish the threat of
phishing attacks by enforcing secure practices, such as not clicking on
external email links.
Phishing protection from Imperva
Imperva offers a combination of access management and web
application security solutions to counter phishing attempts:
·
Imperva Login Protect lets
you deploy 2FA protection for URL addresses in your website or web application.
This includes addresses having URL parameters or AJAX pages, where 2FA
protection is normally harder to implement. The solution can be deployed in
seconds with just a few clicks of a mouse. It doesn’t require any hardware or
software installation and enables easy management of user roles and privileges
directly from your Imperva dashboard.
·
Working within the cloud, Imperva Web Application Firewall (WAF)
blocks malicious requests at the edge of your network. This includes preventing
malware injection attempts by compromised insiders in addition to reflected XSS
attacks deriving from a phishing episode.
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