--Originally published at Merino is talking about security.

Phishing refers to the act of masquerading as a company or institution in order to steal information, such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details.

I presented this subject in class, and to be honest is quite a tricky one. The interesting thing about phishing is that, even if it occurs within the different communications technologies, the attacker doesn't actually need any technical knowledge about technology. The attack happens at a human level, so the attacker doesn't need to be a hacker per-se, they'll just send you an e-mail, pretending to be a company or something, saying that something is wrong with an account of yours, and they need your password to fix it. As easy as that.

The more intricate phishing scams will require technical/hacking skills, like hosting a fake websites online, with a url that's almost indistinguishable from the real deal (only different by a couple of characters, they added 'the', different extension, etc.), where users "log in", or at least they think they do, and actually give away their credentials to attackers. A recent example is what happened with the giant company Equifax because, not satisfied with having a massive security breach, they linked on Twitter to a phishing site. If a large company can be fooled, what about the rest of us. Thats why we always check, and double check the URL var.

But examples like the one above are just the tip of the iceberg, as I wrote above, attackers don't need to be technical experts, they just need to get in contact with you through an email, social media message, even phone calls.  We need to smart about protecting ourselves, if you someone approached you on the street asking for your email and/or password, even if he/she claimed to be from Continue reading "Phishing phish." →