What is Whaling in Cyber Security? [Best Practices + Tips]

Recently various Indian companies have been attacked by hackers, refers to a recent report published by Nordlocker. India is one of the Top 10 countries according to Ransomware Risk Index. Cyber-attacks are majorly followed by simple tactics like Phishing or Whaling Attacks. Phishing simply means catching fish, this is the easiest way in the world of cyber security, to steal your banking details or personal credentials. In this, hackers steal your personal information and empty your account. 

What is Whaling attack?

Whaling definition is “Whaling” dictates that attackers deliberately target top level executives and if attackers put extra effort to catch a whale fish since the probability of getting payoffs can be vast. Their control and having authority in companies and have over-all access to all critical information 

1. What is Whaling in Cyber Security ?

Whaling means in security is superior phishing attack technique. This typically targets top-level executives e.g., CEO or CFO or COO to steal confidential information about the company. This information may be the company’s financial information or employee’s personal details. The spoofed email has techniques targeting victims which includes sensitive information or moving money into an account. 

These phishing attacks required massive study to get access or get compromised organization, an having detailed information about business process and employees the best actions. 

Such attacks can be controlled with the help of Inside protection which you can learn from our course Certified Ethical Hacker Training    

Objectives of Whaling Attacks or Whaling Phishing

Major objectives of attackers do a whale phishing attack as under: 

1. Control : Once attackers compromised to an organization's network move may move to connected networks to the organization easily and even can give anyone administrator access.
2. Money: Hackers use this whaling phishing definition to misuse targets accounts to get money transfer to them.
3. Corporate Intelligence: If a hacker’s effort to attack is successful, they target to get business secrets or other business-related intellectual property to provide to competition companies or other countries.
4. Supply Chain: Attackers always target to get access to their weak objects in the organization's supply chain.
5. Personal Smear Campaign: The creditability of a whaling attack evicting could be rigorously spoiled, provoking someone with such campaign or may organize other attack. 
6. Malware Circulation: Some malware types like rootkits, ransomware and keyloggers that hackers might deceptively install on the whaling attack victims.

Also Read:  Online Cyber Security Courses with Certificates

How Whaling Attacks Works? 

Whaling attack is never a day or two launched by any hackers. They initially study about the target organization and collect essential information to imitate a top-order specific executive at the target organization. Then they define a strategy to mislead their typical target professional. Attackers target the critical organization information which top-level executives can access and is easy to steal. 

Hackers try to find out organization and its executives' information easily available in public domain. They also check the social media handles of company and its executives for such information. Once adequate research is done and appropriate information is collected, hackers make action plans for initiating an attack. Attackers normally use rootkits and malware attacks to get entry to an organization’s network.

Hackers create email messages which impersonate malicious email like CEO email which is directed to the Finance team or CFO. If the end-user or typical finance team executive could not identify such email, it creates opportunity to attacker to gain access and they accomplish the outcome typically money or critical information or entry to company network for upcoming attacks.

5 Ways to Protect Against Whaling Phishing 

To protect against whaling or phishing attacks requires combination of multiple things like employee whaling cyber awareness challenge, infrastructure, and data protection policy. Please follow the following best practices to control such attacks : 

1. Employee Awareness 

It is every employee’s responsibility to safeguard the company’s information and assets from any type of cybersecurity risk. Whaling attacks information like how to identify such phishing email and its consequences should be trained to all employees rather than just top-level executives. Majorly it aimed at Top level executives, there are chances lower-level employees may help to attacker to identify executives through vulnerabilities through vulnerabilities. Companies all staff should be trained about Social Engineering attacks methods as bogus email address that imitate a trusted email address. Like finance@gmail.com then attacker could send a phishy email from finance@gamil.com to impersonate the original correspondent and get the trust of victim. Employees might get suspicious emails for money. 

2. Multistep Verification 

If your CEO or CFO sends you a request to transfer some amount to a different country account. Maybe you feel this odd request and can instantly confirm whether the request is genuine or not. Even if this is a proper channel request, it is always good practice to get approval on the phone. Prior to disclosing any vital information to a caller who randomly calls and asks for your access credentials, always confirm their authenticity.

Financial and critical data transfers requests and critical or sensitive data access should be authorized through multiple levels of verification. Emails and attachments are always scanned and checked for malware or viruses and other issues by third-party vendors for suspicious traffic.

3. Data Protection Policies 

The organization needs to introduce Data Protection policies to safeguard emails and important data observed for malicious network activity. It is expected to add a layered defense into those policies against the whale phishing definition and phishing overall to reduce the probability of the breach occurring at the last line of defense. Email monitoring policies should also be added to the detection features of phishing attacks and automatically prohibit those emails before they possibly influence victims.

Detection Features of a potential phishing email include the following:

• The following are Detection features of probable phishing emails: 
• Trusted address is slightly differing from while display or domain name. 
• This type of email communication comprises money solicitations or pleas for assistance in obtaining information.  
• The domain age does not correlate to the trusted correspondent's domain age.

4. Social Media Education 

Whaling attacks majorly targets top-level executives, they should understand social media’s critical role. As part of Social Media whaling cyber awareness, executives should control information exposure to social media which can be used during social engineering attacks. CEOs and CFOs and other top-level executives need to set privacy restrictions on their individual social media accounts. Behavioral communication data are often open to access to hackers to impersonate and exploit.

5. Anti-Phishing Tools and Organizations 

Anti-phishing software and managed security services are available in the market to protect phishing and whaling attacks. Social engineering strategies, on the other hand, remain largely unchanged since they depend on exploiting human mistake, which remains regardless of cybersecurity technology.

The Anti-Phishing Working Group (APWG) is an organization committed to phishing and cybersecurity research and prevention. It offers tools to businesses affected by phishing and performs research to keep you up to date on the current risks. Companies can also submit a suspected threat to APWG for investigation.

Phishing vs Whaling Phishing vs Spear Phishing

In current scenarios Phishing attacks is one of the common cyber security threats all over the world.  

Phishing is an extensive term that refers to any type of attack that attempts to target a victim into performing an action, such as sharing sensitive information, such as usernames, passwords, and financial records, for malicious purposes; installing malware; or completing a fraudulent financial payment.

Hackers attacks targeting users to get critical information or to social engineering the victim into taking some unsafe action. 

Whaling Phishing and Spear phishing are two of the most dangerous types of phishing to be aware of.

Phishing attacks normally initiates emails to a wide number of people without knowing how many would be successful, whaling email attacks typically target one person at a time, usually a top-level official, with highly tailored information.

Whaling attack is a specific form of Spear phishing that focuses on top-level officials of a company. Spear phishing attacks targeting specific individuals. Both attacks usually take ample time and effort of the hacker compared to ordinary phishing.

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Examples of Whaling Attacks

Whaling attacks apply social engineering techniques to encourage Top level executives to give information or funds. 

In 2016, a notable whaling attack occurred when a high-ranking Snapchat employee received an email from a hacker posing as the CEO. The employee was duped into giving the hacker employee payroll information; the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) eventually investigated the attack.
The most spectacular example is the dismissal of FACC CEO in 2016, who fell victim to a whaling attack that resulted in the finance department sending $56 million to fraudsters. 

In another 2016 whaling attack, a Seagate employee unknowingly emailed the income tax information of several current and former company employees to an unauthorized third party. Following reports of the phishing scam to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and the FBI, it was revealed that the attack exposed thousands of people's personal information. 

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Conclusion

Phishing scams aren't just about contest or lottery winnings. They can be much more difficult to detect in some cases, such as whaling. That is what makes them so dangerous, and it is for this reason that you and your employees must remain aware and look for signs of phishing. 

Phishing scams can happen to anyone, including tech-savvy individuals and businesses. Make sure you understand how cyber scams work and how to recognize the signs of a phishing campaign to protect yourself, your reputation, and your organization. 

Must Read: KnowledgeHut Certified Ethical Hacker Training