Spear Phishing Ways to Minimize its Risks By

Spear Phishing Ways to Minimize its Risks By Basiru A. Mohammed Mercy College

What Is It? Spear Phishing is a social engineering attack Phishing attacks trick victims into providing their credentials It can also be used to create a backdoor within an organization’s system 97% of participants fell for at least one of the phishing messages sent to them in the phishing experiment [1] Due to the human negligence or errors, phishing attacks in general have become one of the most successful attacks

What do we know? Spear phishing are attacks on renowned individuals Phishing attacks are a form of Advanced Persistent Threat where the attacker seeks to gain information and remain undetected for a long period of time According to a Trend Micro’s findings on APT related spear phishing, 91% of targeted attacks involve spear-phishing emails [2]

How is it done? Use of embedded link within an email with the aim of harvesting credentials of victims Creation of malicious program as an attachment to an email to create a backdoor via Trojan Obtaining information through the phone by impersonation Spoofing the sender address to make messages look credible

Is that Even Possible? Goal is to make victim believe it’s from a trusted source Starts with extensive reconnaissance Recon enables the hackers to streamline the emails sent to their targets Email sent contain a stealthy malicious program or a link to a fake website designed by the hacker Downloading the attachment of the email will enables the Trojan to be installed on the target’s computer Or clicking the link takes targets to a malicious website to collect their credentials

Website Attack Vectors Using Kali Linux, type sudo setoolkit and press enter. Press ‘y’ to agree to the license agreement Select menu 1 and press enter, which will also take you to another menu. From the next menu, select 2 ‘Website Attack Vectors’ and enter From the next menu presented, select 3 ‘Credential Harvester Attack Method’ and enter From the next menu presented, select 2 ‘ Site Cloner’ and enter It will demand you to provide an IP address, if you don’t have it handy, open another terminal and type sudo ifconfig to obtain the IP address of your system Enter the URL to be cloned, for instance http: //www. facebook. com A new URL will be presented to you Compose an email, copy and embed the URL created in the email Keep the terminal opened as you will receive the credentials there.

Spear Phishing Attack Vectors Using Kali Linux, type sudo setoolkit and press enter. Press ‘y’ to agree to the license agreement Select menu 1 and press enter, which will also take you to another menu. From the next menu, select 1 ‘Spear-Phishing Attack Vectors’ and hit enter From the next menu presented, select 2 ‘Create a File. Format Payload’ and hit enter At the next menu, select 4 ‘Microsoft Word RTF Fragments MS 10_87 At the next menu, select 5 ‘Windows Meterpreter Reverse_TCP(x 64) Enter a port number or keep the default 443 After creating the malicious file, rename the Attach the malicious file in the email created to trick the victim.

What Can Be Done? Institutional Educate employees Conduct mock phishing attack scenarios Protect network from unwanted programs Use legitimate applications from trusted vendors a keep it updated Install antivirus for both network and internal systems Use of a firewall and web filters to block malicious websites Encrypt all sensitive company information Develop a comprehensive policy for BYOD and other security policies

What Can Be Done? Individuals Avoid sharing too much information on social media Avoid opening files or following links from unknown email sources. Make use of the spam filters on your email applications. Investigate every email that has a link or attachment. Make use of a very good antivirus software and update it regularly. Make use of a firewall for your private network. Do not share personal information with websites that do not make use of two-factor authentication.

What Have We Learnt? As cyber-attacks are becoming more sophisticated, more people are falling victims. According to SANS Institute, 95% of all attacks on enterprise networks are result of successful spear phishing [2] Based on our knowledge of Spear phishing attacks we can deploy the necessary measures to minimize our risk of falling victims to them.

References [1] Egelman S. , Cranor F. L. and Hong J. , “You’ve Been Warned: An Empirical Study of the Effectiveness of Web Browser Phishing Warnings, ” CHI 2008 Proceedings-Am I Safe, April 5 -10 2008. Available: ACM Digital Library, https: //dl-acm-org. rdas-proxy. mercy. edu/citation. cfm? id=1357219 [Accessed February 18, 2018]. [2] Micro, T. (2012). Spear-Phishing Email: Most Favored APT Attack Bait. Trend Micro, http: //www. trendmicro. com. au/cloudcontent/us/pdfs/security-intelligence/white-papers/wp-spear-phishing-email -most-favored-apt-attack-bait. pdf (Accessed March 1, 2018). [3] Weinberg N. How to Blunt Spear Phishing Attacks, March 6, 2013. Retrieved from: https: //www. networkworld. com/article/2164139/networksecurity/how-to-blunt-spear-phishing-attacks. html. [Accessed March 1, 2018].