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Smartphone Phishing Attacks Increasing

November 3, 2021

It is no secret that cybercriminals have increased phishing activity since the pandemic. More people utilizing consumer grade equipment in a less secure work-at-home environment creates a fertile ground for phishing attack victims. According to a ZDNet post, phishing attacks are shifting to mobile devices. That’s not surprising since mobile devices are the primary computing technology for more than 50% of users. The ultimate goal of the cybercriminal is to gain network access. Attacking a smartphone means a greater success rate for getting that access.

Spotting a phishing attack on a smartphone is much harder than on a computer. Think about it. When you get an email on a computer, determining the originating email address is pretty easy even if the display name is familiar. On a smartphone, typically you just see the display name and not the actual email address. It takes a lot more work and jumping through hoops to expose the actual originating email address. As the post states, “Tailoring phishing emails towards mobile devices can make them more difficult to spot because the smaller screen provides fewer opportunities to double check that links in messages are legitimate, while smartphones and tablets might not be secured as comprehensively as laptops and desktop PCs, providing attackers with a useful means of attempting to compromise networks.”

To make matters worse, the security of mobile devices is typically left in the hands of the remote user and not the enterprise. Another reason to ban BYOD and issue firm smartphones to end-users. Train your employees to be particularly vigilant, especially if they use a mobile device to access corporate resources.

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