Cyber-Security: Phishing, Spear Phishing, Ransomware, Scareware and Enterprise Information Security

Cyber-Security

What is Phishing ?
 The term phishing was coined from the notorious generations of hackers in the 1960s-
1970s. The phone phreaks started a long standing tradition of cyber warfare which was
hilarious by blowing a toy whistle into phone receivers aiming to mimic a hertz tone.
 The whistle tricked phone companies into switching the circuits giving the phreaks a
free chance to call.
 This was a hacking innovation at that time but might sound ridiculous for us today but it
exploited vulnerability in free call switches which largely relied on in band signaling
(Abomhara, 2015).
 Phishing is a hacking technique that which is the digital equivalent of net casting. It is a
trap and specifically occurs when an email is send that is designed to bait and lure a
user into clicking on the link or the URL.
 The URL lands to a page that sends up to a known brand name such as Microsoft.
 The purposes of the web form is to extract personal information without the user’s
knowledge such as the login credentials (AlDairi, 2017).

Spear Phishing
 Spear Phishing on the other hand is similar phishing but the attacker in this
one is after something in particular.
 Spear phishing targets an individual and not a large net of consumers.
Hackers in spear phishing pretend to know you in person. It’s more of a
friend scamming you.
 It may include a business email compromised to show one as a senior
employee of the company, for example a bank manager requesting their
junior to wire direct transfers to fraudulent companies (Essa, et al,2018,).
 The hacker impersonates people you know and engages in social
engineering.
 The attacker reaches this by researching the target on the social media
platforms or getting information from data breaches using P2P protocols
like Torrent.

Ransomware
 It is a malware that tries to force or frighten end computer users into
paying ransoms by restriction of their access to devices that have
been infected by the malware or threatening legal action.
 Ransom ware can cause the affected computer to be completely
inoperable.