Fraudulent activities like sending phishing links online are becoming more common with the evolving technology. Phishing has spread to all forms of communication, from work and personal
e-mail to SMS, social media and even advertising. According to a new study, one out of every ten consumers click on a phishing link on phone.
People unknowingly or accidentally click phishing links on their phones, iPhone or other devices, making it reveal users' personal data and manipulate it for malicious purposes.
According to an analysis of phishing trends in a sample of 500,000 protected devices from 90 countries including India, this doesn't just mean receiving messages but also clicking
on them.
The number of mobile users falling for phishing attacks has surged by 160 percent, according to the data by Cloud security provider Wandera (a Jamf subsidiary).
Almost all phishing websites or domains are hosted on a "secure" portal that has a padlock in the URL bar.
"Today, HTTPS verification is used by 93% of successful phishing sites to mask their fraud. This figure has risen tremendously since 2018, when it was only 65 percent," as
stated in the report.
Phishing is a type of social engineering in which an attacker sends a fraudulent message to a human target in the attempt to obtain sensitive information or deploy malicious software
on the victim's infrastructure, such as ransomware.
It is easier for an attacker to use a phishing attack to exploit a person and steal data than it is to exploit a protected device operating system.
"In fact, in this age of cloud-enabled companies, user credentials are far more valuable to an attacker, as they provide access to sensitive data that is stored and managed beyond
the device in software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications, online file storage repositories, and data centres," according to the report.
The execution of phishing attacks has progressed well beyond poorly written emails promising 'unclaimed lottery wins.'
"They're not only more personalised and compelling, but they're reaching people in more locations than ever before, and they're increasingly attacking business credentials and data," asserts the research.