How does phishing work?
- Preparation: The attacker selects a goal(targeted user) and collects all data about them, which includes e-mail addresses, social media profiles, or any other data.
- Creation of fraudulent content material: The attacker creates fraudulent content material, including phishing emails, textual content messages, or social media messages. This content often includes logos, branding, or language that imitates big and authenticate companies.
- Delivery of the phishing attempt: The attacker sends the phishing content material to the focused people through e-mail, text messages, and social media. The messages include clicking on a link, downloading an attachment, or providing sensitive data.
- Manipulation: The phishing content material is crafted to manipulate recipients into taking positive action.
- Victim Interaction: If the recipient falls for the phishing attempt, they’ll click on a malicious link, and download a wrong attachment. By doing this, all the sensitive information of the user will go to the attacker.
- Exploitation of Data: Once the attacker obtains the sensitive data, consisting of login credentials, financial information, and private data, they can exploit it for various malicious purposes. This may include identification theft, financial fraud, and unauthorized access.
Phishing in Ethical Hacking
Phishing is one type of cyber attack.It is an unethical way to dupe the user or victim to click on harmful sites. The attacker crafts the harmful site in such a way that the victim feels it to be an authentic site, thus falling prey to it. The most common mode of phishing is by sending spam emails that appear to be authentic and thus, taking away all credentials from the victim. The main motive of the attacker behind phishing is to gain confidential information.