by Jon Lober | NOC Technology
Smishing, vishing, quishing—at some point, the list of phishing attack vectors starts to sound like a bad joke. Unfortunately, these forms of cyberattack are very real—and their results are anything but funny.
Smishing is the term that cybersecurity experts use for social engineering scams carried out through SMS texts. The word itself is a portmanteau of “sms” and “phishing.” SMS is the attack vector; phishing is the attack method.
Despite the prevalence and importance of email, SMS (or “short message service”) text is the backbone of global communication. Around the world, more than 23 billion text messages are sent every day. Links sent through SMS have the highest click-through rate of any communication method, between 8.9 %and 14.5%, roughly ten times the average rate of email clicks.
Aware of these remarkable statistics, cybercriminals have proven eager to exploit unsuspecting victims through a wide variety of smishing attacks. IBM reports on several of the most common social engineering techniques used by smishers.
As we have shared before, not even IT support companies are spared from phishing attacks. One of our employees was recently targeted by a smisher impersonating NOC Technology’s CEO.
Although simple, this is precisely the type of attack that can easily ruin a career or even sink a small business if not treated with extreme caution.
Although the smishers did a pretty good job, there are still several signs that this text is a scam.
Once you have identified a fake SMS text, take the following steps.
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