Phishing – a Great Threat Today in The World Of Internet

The above topic is about the one of the major social threat these days which is Phishing. This is mainly used to steal the user credentials illegally using a fake website or an interface which looks as the real one. With the help of this method hackers are able to steal millions every day.

Introduction

Phishing is a fraud attempt to get the personal credentials of the users by creating fake interface such as website looking similar as the real one and by email spoofing also.

The user is given a link to click on and as soon as the user clicks on the link the user is directed to a fake website or gateway which looks similar to the real one. In some cases, the user is sent a mail about the bonus they have got from any shopping and then they are directed to the gateway where they enter their credentials and guess what? They are stolen. This was the simple technique which is used nowadays but there is lot more on which we are going to talk about.

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We can also say that Phishing is a social engineering technique used to deceive user and crack down the web security bugs.

Techniques used in phishing:

Spear Phishing: The phishing attempts which includes a specific person or a firm is termed as spear phishing. The great example of spear phishing is the American Election campaign of Hillary Clinton 2016, in which Group-4127 attacked more than 1800 email accounts and used the accounts-google.

com to attack the user linked to it.

Clone Phishing: In this type of phishing attempt the user is sent with a email which has been sent previously but in this type of email the recipient is same but the attachment contains the malicious files to exploit your system and gain trust of you. This is the best way to gain the access of any computer system nowadays.

Whaling: The phishing attacks which used against the high profile people and the big firms are termed as whaling phishing attacks. Now the question arises what are the measures to be followed to save ourselves from phishing attacks.

Following are the points we can remember to prevent ourselves from phishing attacks:

• heck who has sent the email, Is the email from a trusted person or not? Or the email has come from an non trusted person?
• heck whether the person is asking to click on any link, if yes then delete the mail before clicking it.
• Take a very close look to the body of the mail you received, check for any bad grammar or misspelling. If there is any, please be cautious.
• Don’t reply or call on the numbers provided in the mail, as it can a spam trying to gather your information.
• Delete the messages which ask you to verify your personal details such as credit card, debit card or net banking.
• If you are very concern with account you are holding, immediately report to the organization with who you do your business.

Now how to report these type of Phishing emails, the process is very simple as following:

• Forward the received email to spam@uce.gov and to the organization who is mentioned in the email you received.

• If you are already tricked by the phishing method, you need to perform following actions as below:

• File your report at Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov/complaint
• Go and open FTC’s identity Theft website because the people who are victims of phishing can be also the victims of identity theft also.

Conclusions

The conclusion of the above research is that the emails received by the people asking to enter their credential is a total fraud and a way to steal your information. Nowadays due to phishing people are becoming victims of identity theft also in which hackers use the social engineering method to use victim’s information for the bad uses. Acknowledgment: I will like to thank Chandigarh University and my teacher Rohit Kumar Bhullar for helping me to complete this research paper. I acknowledge your contribution in research and the guidance provide by you all.