What’s your favourite Pizza?
In two recent posts, 7 Social Engineering Red Flags to Watch For and Fancy a Phishing Trip?, we discussed what to look out for in an attempted Phishing attack and ways in which training Users can provide a human firewall against threats.
It occurred to me when writing the two posts referenced above that perhaps they infer Phishing attacks only come from rather serious, sinister/hacker-centric sources and if you check the spelling, grammar, the look and feel of an email and its graphic, spot the ‘urgency flags’ and ‘hover’ over the sender address and links, then you have a pretty good chance of spotting a ruse.
But then it further occurred to me that it can also very much depend on your mindset at the moment when you interact with a piece of communication. The below graphic, which I have borrowed from a source on LinkedIn, illustrates this problem nicely.
Let’s be honest, who hasn’t at some stage been involved in a message thread going around social media, usually shared by a member of your family or a friend, where you are asked the kind of questions shown in the HERE’S HOW YOU CAN ACTUALLY GET HACKED section in the right-hand graphic?
And just look at the ‘friendly graphics’ and colours used to elicit a response, they don’t look sinister at all, but you could inadvertently be giving away security information or a password to a cyber-criminal.
Sure, it can be fun providing these answers for the benefit of friends and family , but in all likelihood you are filling the hackers’ database with information they can use to crack your passwords for anything from your On-line Personal Banking Service to your Amazon Account.
So beware and don’t share!
Thanks
Richard
