What is vishing?
Vishing is the practice of using social engineering over the telephone system with the purpose of stealing sensitive financial information or other sensitive personal data from a victim. Vishing is one of the most serious threats today and is widely perpetrated by criminals.
The word “vishing” is a combination of two words “voice” and “phishing”. In this technique, attackers use the telephone system to do phishing and hence the name.
Vishing is typically used by criminals to steal sensitive banking information like account number, PIN, password, OTP, and credit card numbers. Attackers can also steal other personal details of users and exploit that to perpetrate identity theft.
Attackers often use VoIP and an automated system like IVR to perpetrate vishing. They may even use techniques like War Dialing and Caller ID Spoofing to serve their purpose.
What is war dialing?
Attackers often use war dialing to harvest phone numbers of potential victims. It is a technique to automatically scan a list of telephone numbers in a particular region. Attackers often use dedicated software to dial all numbers in a local area one by one. As soon as they get a response from any number, they simply note it down so that they can later use it for vishing.
What is caller ID spoofing?
Attackers often use Caller ID Spoofing to deceive a victim in vishing. They mask the actual caller telephone number and a different deceiving number appears in the receiver of the victim.
Attackers can use a variety of methods and different technologies for that purpose. In the past, Caller ID Spoofing would require a piece of advanced knowledge, but nowadays attackers often use VoIP or PRI lines to do that easily. For example, some VoIP providers give a user the option to configure the displayed number. This has lots of legitimate uses also. For example, a doctor may want to answer a patient from his home, but he may not want to reveal his home phone number at the same time. But, attackers often use this technique to hide their identity and impersonate others.
How does vishing work?
Attackers may perpetrate vishing as mentioned below:
- Criminals first harvest phone numbers of potential victims. They may use several techniques for that purpose. They may steal phone numbers from an institution or they may use war dialing to find out valid phone numbers.
- The criminals then start making calls to potential victims. They usually use Caller ID Spoofing to deceive the victims and hide their identity.
- In a vishing call, the attackers may trick a user in revealing sensitive financial details. They may say the call is from a bank and there is a problem with the user’s bank account or credit/debit card and the user needs to give his financial details to the caller in order to address the problem. The attackers may also use automated instructions to ask the victim to type in his credit card number, account number or PIN on the keypad. And, in some cases, the attackers ask the victim for his personal details so that the attackers can later use that to impersonate the victim for fraudulent purposes.
A real-life example of vishing
A widely perpetrated vishing scam is Microsoft tech support scam. In this scam, the attackers …
0 Comments