Phishing Payloads

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 Phishing Payloads 

One of the biggest cybercrimes ever — with the highest number of defendants charged for the same crime — was what the FBI called Operation Phish Phry. The attack sparked a multinational phishing investigation after targeting hundreds of bank and credit card customers, all of whom received emails with links to fake, but authentic-looking, financial websites. On the site, targets were asked to enter their account numbers and passwords into fraudulent forms.

What you need to know: Despite its simplicity, phishing remains the most pervasive and dangerous cyberthreat. In fact, research shows that as many as 91% of all successful attacks are initiated via a phishing email. These emails use fraudulent domains, email scraping techniques, familiar contact names inserted as senders, and other tactics to lure targets into clicking a malicious link, opening an attachment with a nefarious payload, or entering sensitive personal information that perpetrators may intercept. The “payload” refers to the transmitted data that is the intended message. Headers and metadata are only sent to enable the delivery of the payload to the correct person.

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