For years, spear phishing attacks relied on the foolishness and naivete of computer users to trick them into revealing passwords and other sensitive information to individuals posing as legitimate parties via spoofed emails or fake websites. Today's spear phishing attacks effortlessly rob even cautious cynics with expensive name-brand security software. Small business owners can literally be wiped out with a single email!

What Are Phishing Attacks?

Phishing attacks are launched by cybercriminals upon consumers primarily to gain a few pieces of important data that can be used for financial gain, such as a person's user ID and password to their online bank account. Typically, consumers receive emails that appear to be from their bank or some other legitimate organization that trick the recipient into literally telling the criminals their user ID and password, for example. One class of phishing attacks increasingly prevalent today no longer relies on tricking end-users but instead employ what security practitioners call a 'man-in-the-browser' attack.

Basically, 'man-in-the-browser' attacks exist because the security within a web browser is alarmingly flawed from the perspective of stuff separate from other stuff. So, that other tab in your browser, or that web page you visited prior to your online bank website, might leave malicious code inside your web browser that allows cybercriminals to eavesdrop or insert financial transactions such as a bank payment to an overseas account.

This is why I strongly recommend that all computer users utilize two or more different web browsers, not separate web browser windows or tabs from the same web browser software, but use Internet Explorer, Firefox, or whatever all at the same time but for different types of websites. BTW, the web browser that you use for financial activities should not be the one that renders a web page after you've clicked on a link in your email, instant messenger, or PDF reader!

What Are Spear Phishing Attacks?

Phishing Attacks sound pretty scary. Fortunately, using two or more different web browsers radically reduces your risks from phishing attacks. There are additional risks when web browsing from a hotel room or public Wi-Fi that I'd have to address in another post if anyone is interested (let me know).

Spear Phishing Attacks are phishing attacks that target a specific person or organization. For the most part, spear phishing attacks are carried out via email, though instant messengers and social networks such as Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn can be used also. These attacks exploit the trust that we all have with our familiars: friends, family, and business associates. We'll read an email or some other kind of message from a familiar. More importantly, we're quite likely to accommodate a request or recommendation from a familiar to:

* Open a document

* Play a multimedia file

* Click on a hyperlink

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