What turns email into phishing?

Hackers are very talented in computers and regularly add to their capabilities in this field and access people's information in different ways. They may get help from hacking emails, which can damage users'  information security, which we will discuss in more detail below.

What is phishing?

This attack is a kind of social engineering attack that hackers can easily access important user information, such as credit card numbers, important documents in the user system, and so on. These emails are very attractive and somehow encourage the user to click on them. Finally, when the user is aroused by fear, anxiety, etc., he/she clicks on them. Then most of them even prefer to click on malicious links given in the email, which causes the entire user system to be hacked. The hackers will reach their goal quickly. Organizations and individuals exposed to such attacks lose a great deal of credibility, and these hacking attacks have many destructive effects on their system.

Phishing history:

In 1990, the American Online Service Provider (AOL) introduced the concept of phishing, the name phishing was chosen according to the previous generation of scams named phone phreaking. Instead, of the letter f (in fishing), they put the letters ph (phishing).

What turns email into this?

The question that may arise in your mind is how an email becomes  a phishing email  ? To answer this question, we must say that these emails are much more attractive than regular ones and the message that such emails have, often in relation with a matter of concern (such as the possibility of compromising your information), a matter of happiness (such as you winning a lottery), etc., the purpose of pointing out these issues by the hackers is that when users are concerned about something, they cannot think correctly. They will open the email without checking it and click on the malicious links mentioned.

These emails often use some URLs which are similar to a reputable company's URL with only very small differences and try to do all of their site design like a reputable site and make small changes that the user cannot recognize, so the user thinks that this site is a credible one, for example, you may open your email and see that it contains a congratulatory message from the bank informing you that you have won a lot of money in the bank lottery, which will raise your adrenaline. You will be happy, so you cannot think properly and may even give your information to them or click on a suggested link given in that email, because, at this point, you never think about whether this message is real or not. You don't think that whether the email address is suspicious or not, all the points mentioned can make you ignore the email address and implement the commands in it.

Then, the message may ask you to click on the link and see what you need to do to receive your prize through that link. You may also be asked to enter your password and username to log in, which is enough to get the hacker to their desired goal because once you have entered all the information, you are usually linked to the real institution to enter your information for a second time, so when you refer to a legal institution, you do not realize that your information has been stolen and everything seems normal to you.

The points mentioned causing an email to become phishing and allow hackers to access your important data. There are many examples of phishing emails. For example, you may be warned in a message from a large company with an account that your password is invalidated. If you do not try to change your password within 24 hours via the link below, you will lose your account, after encountering such a message, you may immediately click on the link and help the hacker to steal your information.

Phishing techniques:

- Spear phishing:

In these attacks, the hacker needs to have a lot of knowledge about a particular organization or company and know its  security  configuration. Finally, the hacker tries to access user information through a hacking attack. Such attacks require careful planning. Hackers must send the email with the correct and relevant title to the target department to achieve their goal so that employees are not suspected. An employee is going to be involved.

For example, a hacker may have targeted the management department and gained access to a wide range of information by sending an infected e-mail related to something that the manager does not suspect. They may use that information to create malicious emails for other parts of the company and ultimately causes a lot of damage to the company's  security, for such actions taken by hackers not to disrupt the security of the system, you should raise the awareness of employees and prevent them from achieving their goal with proper and moral training, other ways can help maintain information security that should be taught to employees.

- Email phishing scams:

Through these attacks, emails are used that have lots of similarities in addresses, logos, signatures, etc., and finally prevent the ability to think properly for a while by arousing users' feelings and finally get the hackers to their desired results and provide them with the information in the system as soon as possible, the point about these emails is that, if you look carefully at the email address, you will notice that it has a little spelling difference. If you pay more attention to it, there is a possibility that you can realize many mistakes and differences which can help you find out that the email is fake quickly. Hence, you decide to delete it immediately and check to see whether your system is infected or not.

There are many ways to deal with  phishing attacks  in general, but here are a few of these methods that can keep you away from the dangers of such attacks.

How to protect your system from phishing attacks?

- Two-factor authentication:

One of the best methods you can use against such attacks is two-factor authentication, which adds an extra layer of authentication that can block hackers from accessing your information. In fact, during this process, if hackers obtain a password and username, they need to go through an additional verification layer to reach the user information, which going through the second layer is not as simple as the first one.

- Change passwords regularly:

As mentioned before, you may not notice that your system has been hacked for a while. The hacker can access new information that is added to your system with your password, so you need to be aware that you need to change your password regularly so that hackers cannot have access to your system, it should be noted that you need to follow all the necessary tips to choose a safe password.

- Have the necessary security training:

Suppose you have a lot of  security information. In that case, hackers will have a harder time accessing your information and will need to spend more time and pay more attention to hacking your system through phishing, so if you have a lot of employees who deal with systems, you need to get help from  a security  expert and organize security training classes to increase the information of all employees in the field of security to increase the level of system security and keep the information in it away from hackers' access.

Last word:

In general,  phishing emails  are widely used among hackers. To date, there have been many reports of users and organizations being hacked by these emails, so you need to know how to deal with them by having complete mastery of phishing.