departments to transfer funds or pay invoices based on instructions seeming to originate from a boss, manager, or executive. BEC has defrauded organizations of billions of dollars in the last few years. BEC is also known as CEO fraud or CEO spoofing.
As with most forms of social engineering, defenses for spear phishing require the following:
Labeling information, data, and assets with their value, importance, or sensitivity
Training personnel on proper handling of those assets based on their labels
Requesting clarification or confirmation on any actions that seem abnormal, off-process, or otherwise overly risky to the organization
Some abusive concepts to watch out for are requests to pay bills or invoices using prepaid gift cards, changes to wiring details (especially at the last minute), or requests to purchase products that are atypical for the requester and that are needed in a rush. When seeking to confirm a suspected BEC, do not use the same communication medium that the BEC used. Make a phone call, go to their office, text-message their cell phone, or use the company-approved internal messaging service. Establishing a second “out-of-band” contact with the requester will further confirm whether the message is legitimate or false.
Whaling
Whaling is a form of spear phishing that targets specific high-value individuals (by title, by industry, from media coverage, and so forth), such as the CEO or other C-level executives, administrators, or high-net-worth clients. Whaling attacks require significantly more research, planning, and development on the part of the attackers in order to fool the victim. That is because these high-level personnel are often well aware that they are a high-value target.
Smishing
Short Message Service (SMS) phishing or smishing (Spam over instant messaging [SPIM]) is a social engineering attack that occurs over or through standard text messaging services. There are several smishing threats to watch out for, including these:
Text messages asking for a response or reply. In some cases, replies could trigger a cramming event. Cramming is when a false or unauthorized charge is placed onto your mobile service plan.
Text messages could include a hyperlink/URI/URL to a phishing or scam website or trigger the installation of malicious code.
Text messages could contain pretexts to get you involved in a conversation.
Text messages could include phone numbers. Always research a phone number before calling it, especially from an unknown source. There are phone numbers with the same structure as local or domestic numbers but that may actually be long distance and not included in your calling service or plan, and calling them could cause a connection charge and a high per-minute toll charge.
Although smishing refers to SMS-based attacks, it can sometimes be used to refer to similar attacks occurring through Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS), Rich Communication Services (RCS), Google Hangouts, Android Messenger, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, Apple/iPhone iMessages, WhatsApp, Slack, Discord, Microsoft Teams, and so on.
Vishing
Vishing (i.e., voiced-based phishing) or SpIT (Spam over Internet Telephony) is phishing done over any telephony or voice communication system. This includes traditional phone lines, Voice-over-IP (VoIP) services, and mobile phones. Most of the social engineers waging vishing campaigns use VoIP technology to support their attacks. VoIP allows the attacker to be located anywhere in the world, make free phone calls to victims, and be able to falsify or spoof their origin caller ID.
Vishing calls can display a caller ID or phone number from any source the attacker thinks might cause the victim to answer the call. Some attackers just duplicate your area code and prefix in order to trick the victim into thinking the call is from a neighbor or other local entity. Vishing is simply another form of phishing attack. Vishing involves the pretexting of the displayed caller ID and the story the attacker spouts. Always assume caller ID is false or at least incorrect.
Spam
Spam is any type of email that is undesired and/or unsolicited. But spam is not just unwanted advertisements; it can also include malicious content and attack vectors as well. Spam is often used as the carrier of social engineering attacks.
Spam is a problem for numerous reasons:
Some spam carries malicious code such as viruses, logic bombs, ransomware, or Trojan horses.
Some spam carries social engineering attacks (also known as hoax messages).
Unwanted email wastes your time while you sort through it looking for legitimate messages.
Spam wastes internet resources: storage capacity, computing cycles, and throughput.
The primary countermeasure against spam is an email spam filter. These email filters can examine the header, subject, and contents of a message to look for keywords or phrases that identify it as a known type of spam, and then take the appropriate actions to discard, quarantine, or block the message.
Antispam software is a variation on the theme of antimalware software. It specifically monitors email communications for spam and other forms of unwanted email in order to stop hoaxes, identity theft, waste of resources, and possible distribution of malicious software. Antispam software can often be installed on email servers to protect an entire organization as well as on local client systems for supplemental filtering by the user.
In addition to client application or client-side spam filters, there are enterprise spam tools, including Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), and Domain Message Authentication Reporting and Conformance (DMARC) (see Chapter 12, “Secure Communications and Network Attacks”).
Another important issue to address when managing spam is spoofed email. A spoofed email is a message that has a fake or falsified source address. DMARC is used to filter spoofed messages.
Spam is most commonly associated with email, but spam also exists in instant messaging (IM), SMS, USENET (Network News Transfer Protocol [NNTP]), and web content (such as threaded discussions, forums, comments, and blogs). Failing to block spam allows it to waste resources, consume bandwidth, distract workers from productive activities, and potentially expose users and systems to malware.
Shoulder Surfing
Shoulder surfing
