Phishing is a kind of cyber-attack where the culprit poses as a reputable business entity to deceive common people. All crucial information, such as username, passwords, credit card details, and other such sensitive information is collected. The whole phishing attack is based on psychological manipulations depending on human failures, also known as social engineering attacks.
In general, phishing attacks use fraudulent emails to trap the user. Through emails, users are asked to confirm credit card information or reset their password, which leads to a fake site. In the digital currency ecosystem, phishing attacks are becoming very common. Culprits are trying to lure users to fake websites and collect vital information.
Types
Here are a few common types of phishing:
- Spear phishing: It is a sophisticated attack. Here the attacker collects useful information about the victim, thereby setting up the trap. Such attacks are planned on any particular institution or an individual
- Clone phishing: Here the attacker previously sent a genuine email to lure the user into a malicious site. The attacker may claim it to be a new link or updated link.
- Whaling: Similar to spear phishing that targets the wealthy and government officials.
- Pharming: Here attackers will manipulate a DNS record and redirect site visitors to a fraud link, which is a replica of the original site.
- Website Redirects: Here users are redirected to fake sites, different from what the user intended to visit. Malware is inserted into the user's computer to enable redirects.
- Email Spoofing: Here attackers spoof vital communications from people or genuine companies. These emails may contain malicious site links, which are used to steal vital information such as usernames and passwords.
- Typosquatting: Here visitors are directed to replica sites that use misspellings, foreign language spellings, or slight variants in the domain name. Here phishers take advantage of users mistyping or misreading a URL.
- Impersonation: In this type of phishing, influential figures on social networking sites are impersonated. It is a technique that has recently become popular. Phishers impersonate company heads or leaders to social engineer audiences.
- Malicious Applications: Malicious applications are also used to inject malware into the system. These apps pose as wallets, price trackers, or other crypto tools to steal information.
- Advertisements: Paid promotions or advertisements are another way of phishing. These paid advertisements are used to collect vital information, which may include trading accounts or log in details.
- Voice and Text Phishing: Text message or voice-based phishing is becoming very popular today. Here attackers attempt to collect vital information over call or text messages.
Preventive Measures
Here are a few steps which can help you secure your Ausfinex account from phishing attacks:
- Always check the email thoroughly before clicking the link. Also, check the sender's email address and content. Type the content on search engines to check if there are records of this online.
- The best protection against phishing is thinking about the emails critically. Why are such emails being sent to you? Did you expect such emails? Whenever there is doubt, try all means to communicate with the sender through other means.
- Always check the URL. See if the URL starts with HTTPS and not HTTP. This is not enough assurance alone about the site's legitimacy though. Also, check if there are misspellings or any other irregularities.
- Instead of clicking the link directly from the email, try opening it from other sources to check the legitimacy of the request.
- Never share private keys. Always cross-check if the product and seller are legitimate or not. It is always important to be careful, especially when you are dealing with digital currency transactions.
Phishing is one of the most common and wide-spread attack techniques. Though email filters are trying all means to filter fake messages from real messages, you should always maintain safety and be careful. Be attentive if there are any attempts to gain vital information from you. Cross-check if the sender's request is legitimate or not. Never click on the email links, try navigating the site in your own way. It is always important to be careful while dealing with cryptocurrency transactions: safety is in your hands.