Top 5 Most Common Phishing Attacks

1. Dyre malware email

Dyre was delivered through emails, with links directed towards a phony file sharing service called Cubby. The emails looked pretty standard, as do most other phishing schemes. Some were pretty generic with links that looked like they were taking you to view an invoice, and some linked you to an unable to process payment page. Dyre was a remote access Trojan that targeted victims’ banking information. Dyre was such a problem that it caught the attention of the U.S. CERT.

2. Dropbox Phishing schemes

With third party cloud services constantly growing in popularity, it’s no surprise that it’s also growing in popularity with scammers and hackers. Emails were sent out containing a .zip file attached to them, claiming to contain payment information. It’s second on the list because the emails were sent from a hacked .edu domain. The trusted nature of the domain made this virtually the perfect malicious delivery platform of all time.

3. The IRS data-entry phishing scheme

This scheme is still alive to this day because it is pretty simple to set up. Emails are sent out that are made to look like legitimate IRS communications containing a link for some type of refund owed to the victim. Once clicked, the victim is directed to a form to input payment information. Also, analysis was taken of these emails, and reports stated that the same type of text was found to be used in a phishing scheme in 2006.

4. Ransomware phishing

While not seen as popular these days, in its prime this type of phishing was credited for stealing over $130,000 from victims. The most popular form of this scheme came in the form of a MAILER-DAEMON email. For those who don’t know, you would usually receive this if you’ve input the recipient email address incorrectly and it didn’t have a match. The emails contained links to various cryptolocker type sites; where malicious downloads were set up.

5. .NET Keylogger

These types of attacks are still found currently as well. It’s nothing more than you would expect from a phishing scheme email. Utilizing the standard banking theme with an additional .zip attached to it. Once clicked, the victim would unknowingly download a program which would store the victim’s keystrokes for the hacker to go. From the collected data account usernames and passwords could be easily recovered and used for malicious purposes. While not widely popular anymore thanks to the use of on screen keyboards, it still does see some use.

This type of technology is updated virtually everyday, with new, more advanced forms of malware and phishing techniques coming out constantly. Don’t let the size of this list fool you, phishing and malware attribute to a large number of reported cyber-crimes per year.

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