Phishing attackers will pretend as a trustworthy organization or individual in order to force you to reveal personal information. This method involves sending spoof emails, phone calls, or SMS randomly to a large number of people requesting them to provide their confidential information. To trick people into giving up passwords and other personal details, their communication will appear to come from a legitimate organization. Whether it’s a direct communication or via a fake website form, anything you share goes directly into a scammer’s pocket.

This is a more focused variant of the phishing scam, in which the attacker targets particular people or companies. They then do a background study and customize their messages based on the characteristics, job titles, and contacts of their victims in order to build trust and make their attack less transparent.

Scareware is a technique that manipulates victims by sending false alerts and threatening them with fictitious attacks. Users are fooled into believing their device is infected with viruses and asked to download and install software that has no real benefit (other than for the attacker). When the user clicks the link or installs the software, the attacker gains access to the user’s data.

Baiting

Baiting attacks use baits to lure the victim by triggering their curiosity. Baits are physical or non-physical items such as pendrives, CDs with company logos etc which is used to steal a victim’s confidential information. Attacker leaves bait in a common area such as parking, bathroom etc. Once victim picks up the bait out of curiosity and injects it into a work or home computer, the device will be infected with malware automatically.

By impersonating coworkers, police, bank officials, or other people with right-to-know authority, the attacker will typically gain the confidence of their target. The attacker will pretend they need confidential information from the victim in order to complete a critical task. An attacker will obtain confidential information by telling a series of highly detailed lies.