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Phishing Attacks Getting Increasingly Sophisticated
It is a cat and mouse game. As the police educate users on one form of phishing attack, criminals evolve to use another variation. It is an endless game, but given the high returns for the criminals, they will undoubtedly continue to up their game to scam innocent people.
One new and more sophisticated form of phishing that I have noticed recently, involves the combination of two databases. As users have become warier of generic phishing emails, criminals are now forced to evolve their tactics to reduce the generic nature of phishing emails by adding a second element of information.
Take a look at the screenshot below of a phishing email I received. There are two possible scenarios.
Smart Scammer. Because of Singapore’s conscription system, every Singaporean male serves in the military. Hence this smart scammer was combining one “database” with another to send their targets an email from MINDEF (Ministry of Defence). As receiving an email from MINDEF while being in the reserves is not improbable and this will lower the target’s guard and lull the target into clicking the attached Zip…
