Cyber Intelligence Report

Spear Phishing

A form of phishing where a specific person is deliberately targeted with an email typically containing personal information, purporting to be from a reputable source.

Spear Phishing emails have the same end goal in mind as regular Phishing attacks - they are designed to make a potential victim interact with the email in some way, usually through clicking on a link or attachment. However, they are generally much more difficult to recognise, as the authors include highly relevant information which adds legitamacy to the correspondence.

As an example, criminals often masquerade as vendors and email financial workers with attached invoices relating to recent orders that a company may have placed. Once the attachment is opened, malicious code is executed which can trigger various actions - such as stealing passwords, running cryptojacking software, or taking command of a computer to use in a future botnet for a DDoS attack.