What is Spear Phishing?

How Spear Phishing Works

An effective spear phishing attack requires a great deal of information about the intended target of the attack. At a minimum, the attacker likely needs to know the target’s name, as well as their place of employment, role within an organization and email address.

While this provides basic targeting information, the attacker also needs data specific to the pretext used by the attack. For example, if the attacker wants to pose as a team member discussing a particular project, they require high-level information about the project, names of colleagues, and ideally a copy of the colleague’s writing style. If posing as a vendor with an unpaid invoice, the attacker needs to have the information required to build a convincing invoice for a plausible supplier.

Collecting this information requires the attacker to perform reconnaissance regarding the intended target. Many of the pieces of information required are likely to be available online. For example, a profile page on LinkedIn or a similar site likely contains job role and contact information for a particular target.

Additional information may be gleaned by inspecting the organization’s website, checking for patents involving the employee, and looking for blog articles that they’ve authored or postings on online forums.

After collecting this information, the attacker can achieve a solid understanding of the target. This understanding can then be used to develop a personalized pretext designed to maximize the attack’s probability of success.

The most common form of spear phishing is through emails. Other methods are also used, including:

• SMS
• Social media messages
• Phone calls

Regardless of how the messages are delivered, spear phishing typically deceives the victim by pretending to be someone known to them or a trusted entity.

Why Is Spear Phishing So Effective?

Spear phishing is so much more effective because the hacker has done their homework.

They’ve studied their target and invested time and energy crafting legitimate-looking messages that are much more convincing to the target.

The Hyper-Personalized Messages

The level of research the hacker puts in will correlate with the success rate of the spear phishing attempt. Hackers might gather personal information from social media sites or investigate the target’s close family and friends, anything that can help them craft convincing messages.

These communications could incorporate a range of tactics, including:

• Carefully mimicking the branding and design of reputable, popular companies.
• Invoking an emotional response to get a quick reaction from the target before they stop to consider the message more closely. Examples include fear or urgency through scare tactics or claims of immediate risk.
• Exploiting already compromised accounts to send messages from a known and “trusted” contact.

Difficulty to Spot

Spear phishing is also very effective when targeting organizations.

Training staff to spot low-quality general phishing emails can be easy, but it is much harder to teach people to spot personalized spear phishing attempts. Additionally, the organization may not have proper email security tools in place to block the spear phishing message from making it to the employee’s inbox in the first place.

AI Makes Spear Phishing Even More Difficult to Spot

The process of researching, writing, and designing spear phishing campaigns has also been enhanced and simplified by the proliferation of AI technology.

Attackers can increase the quality of their spear phishing messages by utilizing AI to:

• Automate research processes and extract relevant information from sources online.
• Write more convincing copy; they can even train AI tools using popular email marketing copy to increase success rates.
• Create legitimate-looking fake documents based on real business communications.

With AI, attackers can increase the sophistication and volume of spear phishing attacks, even utilizing the tools to upgrade their bulk phishing messages to improve their chances of infiltrating the victims’ systems.

The Impact of Spear Phishing

The technical outcomes of a spear phishing attack are the same as those of a traditional phishing attack.

The victim reveals sensitive information such as:

• Login credentials
• Financial information
• Customer data
• Intellectual property

…or they enable the attacker to install malware on their system.

But, given that spear phishing takes more effort and targets higher-value individuals or organizations, the impact of spear phishing is generally greater than a standard phishing attack. For instance, compromising the email account of a high-ranking executive with the authority to approve payments can result in immediate money transfers.

This is on top of the typical phishing outcomes, such as:

• Data breaches
• Fraud
• Recurring attacks or advanced persistent threats (APTs)

APTs refer to the attacker using spear phishing as an initial breach without revealing their presence.

They can then remain on the corporate network undetected, gaining more access for a more severe data breach or taking control of resources for operational disruption. The greater impact of this attack vector is demonstrated by the fact that many of the biggest phishing scams of all time are spear phishing examples or whaling.

Attackers targeted high-level business executives or the finance department at a large company, compromising an account and directing employees to transfer funds to the attacker.

Spear Phishing vs. Phishing vs. Whaling

Here are the differences between spear phishing, phishing, and whaling:

• Phishing is the broader category of attack where fake messages manipulate a target into willingly giving up information or control. It is a form of social engineering attack in that it does not exploit a technical IT weakness. It targets the humans using these systems.
• Whaling uses the same personalized approach as spear phishing, except it targets higher value targets, such as c-suite executives. It aims to reveal confidential or financial information that is more valuable to the attacker and is therefore worth investing the time and resources to research and develop specialized phishing messages.
• Spear Phishing is a type of phishing attack that takes a more selective and targeted approach. While traditional phishing reaches a large number of people or organizations sending hundreds or thousands of identical or similar messages, spear phishing targets a small number of people using higher quality, more convincing messages.

The difference between phishing and spear phishing is the difference between quantity and quality.

Phishing sends blanket, low-effort messages to a large number of people or organizations. The chances of success are smaller, but given the number of targets, it is worth it for the attacker.

In contrast, spear phishing takes extra time, effort, and expertise to research a small group of targets and develop bespoke messages that are more credible and convincing. The chances of success are higher, but there are fewer opportunities for it to work.

Given the resources spear phishing requires, state-sponsored attackers or hacktivists often undertake it – cybercriminals with additional resources available to them and motivations to target a specific individual or organization.

How to Prevent Spear Phishing Attacks

Given their added sophistication and the fact they target individuals, not systems, spear phishing attacks present a unique security challenge. They’re harder to intercept using cybersecurity tools than normal phishing messages, and their rate of success is higher.

But, there are security controls and best practices you can implement to prevent spear phishing attacks. The first thing is to train employees on identifying suspicious messages, including those that:

• Deliberately create panic or a sense of urgency.
• Utilize emotional language designed to trigger a specific response and motivate an action.
• Are sent from unusual or unexpected email addresses.
• Specifically ask for sensitive information.
• Contain links with strange formatting or perhaps have misspellings.
• Contain attachments you were not expecting or from a new contact.

Next, there are specific security controls and tools you can implement to protect your network. These include:

• • Email Security Systems: designed to detect suspicious correspondence by analyzing websites used for malicious activities.

• Identify and Access Management (IAM): implement robust role-based access controls to limit the impact of compromised accounts. Additionally, you should incorporate multi-factor authentication to prevent account compromises.

• Antivirus Software: To identify and remediate any malware on your network caused by spear phishing.

• Secure Web Gateway: May block traffic to malicious websites from users clicking on phishing email links.

• Security Incident and Event Management (SIEM):  Automate your response and minimize the impact of a successful spear phishing attack.

Beyond security tools, there are operational changes you can implement to help prevent spear phishing.

This includes establishing verification processes for payments to introduce multiple layers of approval or a delay to help protect against compromised accounts making unauthorized transactions.

Get Serious About Spear Phishing Security with Check Point

Check Point offers industry-leading anti-phishing and email security services for any organization wanting to get serious about spear phishing protection. Leveraging AI and cutting-edge natural language processing, Check Point Harmony prevents phishing and malware from reaching your inbox with best-in-class catch rates.

Schedule a demo now and see why industry analysts rank Harmony as the best email security tool on the market.