What are whaling attacks?

In whaling attacks, cybercriminals will attack those victims who are well-known employees of the company or employees who hold the higher position in the company such as CEO (Chief Executive Officer), CFO (Chief Finance Officer) and so on. But in Spear Phishing attacks or whaling attacks, the attackers can select any other individual to get access to sensitive data. Whaling attack is possible by manipulating victim to visit bogus websites which will look licit for the visitor. This attack can also be done by sending bogus emails which look real to the victim and attacker can ask for intimate information such as personal credentials, company’s confidential information and so on. This attack is hard to discern because it is used to attack selected targets only who has access to the sensitive information of the company and this attack is also thoroughly customized for the victims. The attacker tries to spoof using a domain which really looks alike the original domain name, for instance, sInghcab.com is the original and s1nghcab.com is the bogus website to fool a victim.

whaling attacks

 

Solutions to avoid whaling attacks

Each employee of the company should aware of whaling attack or spear phishing attack to avoid the risk of disclosing sensitive information to the cybercriminal. All the executives of the company should be educated enough to avoid whaling attacks and they should train other employees of the company. The test should be conducted for the employees frequently which will help the employees to learn how to avoid this attack. The senior management employees or other individuals should not share personal information on social media platforms which can be used to gather enough personal information by the attacker to implement cyberattack. The verification process is another method to avoid whaling attack, for instance, if an employee of the company gets the email to transfer funds or share sensitive information then the employee should substantiate that the sender is genuine or not.

 

Need any help with whaling attacks?

Written by Julio Del Cid from DelCorp Data. Julio Del Cid can help with whaling attacks. If you need assistance you can visit our contact page and request a call-back about  whaling attacks

DelCorp Data is a cybersecurity agency which specializes in software-based attacks and overall cyber protection of your organization. Contact us on 1300 del corp / 1300335267. We are an Australian company based in Melbourne.