Hackers and scammers create several phishing messages, like the menu at your Starbucks, they have many options. Each message may differ in text; however, they all have one common theme: steal your data, login credentials, and your identity.
Trustifi’s cloud-based advanced artificial intelligence (AI) email security platform complements Gmail email security to help users prevent phishing attacks from stealing their data.
What Are Gmail Phishing Attacks?
Gmail phishing attacks are as common as someone trying to look over your shoulder to read your phone messages while you’re in the Starbucks line. Phishing emails and text messages commonly employ narratives to deceive individuals into clicking on links or opening attachments. These deceptive messages may appear as unexpected communication from a familiar person or trusted entities, such as banks, credit card companies, utility providers, or online payment platforms.
Scammers use emails and text messages to steal personal information such as passwords, account numbers, and social security numbers. Actual phishing attacks like these happen constantly.
What Steps Are Available to Prevent Against Them?
According to statistics from AAG-IT, there are close to 3.4 billion phishing messages sent by hackers and scammers daily. Yet, Google only stops close to 100 million phishing messages per day. Users ultimately play the most critical role in preventing the threat of phishing from exploiting users within their organization and friends and family.
There are several ways for users to stop a phishing attack from occurring. Here are some preventable steps:
1. Read the entire message before replying—Users who take the time to read their messages thoroughly. Hackers and scammers embed links, images, and attachments within phishing messages that could contain malware. Reading the message before replying helps stop many phishing messages from propagating to other people.
2. After reading the entire message, if you do not recognize the sender, using Gmail tools, report the message as spam, phishing, or a suspicious link. This action will notify Google to block this message for other Gmail users to reduce the number of victims of phishing attacks through their email service.
What are some Real-world examples of phishing scams?
Email phishing attacks cost users an average of four million dollars per data breach. Many advanced phishing attacks are deeply connected to ransomware attacks, causing financial losses, damaging the brand, and impacting technical and business operations.
- REvil ransomware was used globally, including an attack on President Donald Trump in 2020, but it’s uncertain if they got any sensitive documents.
- In 2021, there was a notable attack. REvil announced the data theft associated with Apple’s new products, including schematics for an upcoming MacBook Pro. They demanded $50 million as ransom.
- In February 2022, the San Francisco 49ers NFL team became targeted by the BlackByte ransomware group. The attack only affected the corporate IT network and did not affect the stadium or ticket holders.
- On January 31st, 2023, ION Cleared Derivatives, a division of ION Markets, suffered a ransomware attack that took its systems offline. These systems help automate financial companies’ trading lifecycles.
- The DarkSide hacker group interrupted Colonial Pipeline’s operations for five days, causing fuel shortages and panic-buying in the southeastern United States.
Why do Phishing Emails Try To Impersonate Brands Like Google/Gmail?
A significant component of email phishing attacks is the hacker’s ability to convince the victim the message originated from a trusted source. LinkedIn, Microsoft, Bank of America, Fidelity, and Chase are common and well-known brands hackers will use in an actual impostor attack.
Hackers will impersonate these brands within their phishing messages.
An example: Receiving a Pre-Approved Loan
Loan-Officer@chase@bank@loaner.com (impersonation of the Chase Bank Loan Department)
Dear Mary (The victim’s name pulled from a social media account),
On behalf of Chase Bank, we are proud to offer you a pre-approved loan of $5000.00. Thanks in part to your excellent credit, we will extend this offer for you and welcome you as a new customer to the Chase faily (misspelling) of financial sevices (misspelling).
To complete the loan process, please click on the enclosed link to finish the application process. Since you have already been pre-approved, we only need some basic personal information.
https://www.chase@bank@loaner.com/application. (suspicious link)
If you have questions, please contact me by telephone at 1-888-555-1212.
Welcome to the Chase family,
Sincerely,
Loan-officer.
Hackers using Al and ML tools like WormGPT and FraudGPT create even more realistic email messages with fewer grammar and spelling errors. These tools help hackers determine how effective their initial attack is, along with collecting valuable security telemetry data. This data allows hackers to adjust the velocity of the Gmail phishing attack and extend or decrease the range of targeted victims. These AI also provide exceptional translation capabilities so hackers can send similar phishing messages in various languages.
What Are Some Common Cues To Determine If You Have Received a Phishing Email?
After continuing to follow the most crucial step in preventing phishing attacks by reading the entire message, users will find a pattern and cues within each phishing message.
1. Domain impersonation- If users frequently receive email from Amazon.com and then one day receive a message from customerfirstAmazon.com, this is an important cue to pick up. Users should only receive emails from domains they are familiar with. Any possible lookalikes should be identified within Gmail as a phishing attempt.
2. If the email is addressed to someone other than you, mark it as phishing or spam.
3. If the email is addressed to you and the sender is not someone you know, mark the message as spam or phishing with Gmail.
4. If these suspicious emails request personal details with an acute sense of urgency and demand that you click on a malicious link, they are most likely a phishing scheme.
What Types of Personal or Organization Data Scammers Target with Their Phishing Messages?
Hackers and scammers’ endgame regarding phishing campaigns is basic. They want access to your data, including bank account information, social security number, and driver’s license number. Hackers also want to steal your login details to your social networks, email accounts, and other websites.
Cybercriminals and phishing scammers will use this stolen information to impersonate you, open new bank loans, apply for credit cards, and steal your savings.
What Are Examples of Gmail Phishing?
Regarding the Starbucks analog, hackers have various options regarding which phishing method they should use in their attacks. All email phishing messages focus on exploiting humans in some form. Many people who read their messages on a mobile scan through them, often clicking on links, wondering if this is malicious. Others read emails looking for approved loans to help them out during the holidays, and others look for unsolicited job offers from their LinkedIn connections.
Here are some email phishing examples of the most common phishing attack methods:
Spear Phishing Attack: This attack disguised as a legitimate email targets specific individuals or groups within an organization. Often, these messages are not unsolicited emails; these phishing messages will contain something revealing to the person or group.
Whaling Phishing Attack: Similar to spear phishing attacks, whaling specific targets direct messages to CEOs, boards of directors, or other members of the senior leadership team. Similar to spear phishing, these messages will contain some impersonation, content regarding an actual issue within the organization, or an attempt to use social engineering techniques to establish rapport.
Clone Phishing Attack: Another very challenging phishing scheme to detect, clone phishing users’ actual data from a previous email stolen from an unsuspected user, actual information from a press release or company web blog, or information stolen from someone retrieving valuable found in the company’s trash.
SMS/VISHING Attack: This SMS phishing is becoming commonly paired with other phishing methods. Victims may receive texts from an unknown source and a voicemail (Vishing). These two paired together prompt the victim to contact the hacker directly on a burner phone or click on a malicious link embedded within the text message.
DeepFake Phishing: Deepfake phishing will become one of the most challenging attacks. Using a combination of fake voices, images, and content will harm the 2024 elections. Victims will receive fake news regarding their favorite candidate, along with hackers posing as an honest company collecting political contributions.
How Do You Identify Unfamiliar Email Senders Using a Public Email Service Instead of a Company Domain?
Spotting an email phishing impersonation attack based on domain lookalikes is far easier to prevent than cybercriminals and hackers using @gmail.com or @yahoo.com. These public email services make it a challenge for users to identify if they are sending spam messages in bulk or using various phishing methods, including spear phishing or cloning.
If you receive an email from John_Smith_Jones@gmail.com and need to know who he is, use the Gmail email security tools to find out. Click on the settings (three dots) and pull up the menu.
Select the “Show Original” option.
Gmail provides valuable data to users to see if the sender is an impostor or possibly using a lookalike domain. In this message, the sender comes from a trusted source: Mckinsey.com. The sending domain of Mckinsey.com passed all three DNS authentications: DMARC, DKIM, and SPF. Another essential component is the presence of a valid message ID.
What Steps Should You Take if You Believe You Provided Personal or Organizational Information Because of a Successful Phishing Attack?
First, this happens to everyone, even those in the cybersecurity field. Hackers and scammers continue to devise creative ways to impersonate people we know and lure us into clicking on links that redirect us to a near-perfect clone of a known website.
With any cybersecurity attack, victims should follow these immediate steps:
1. Take a breath; security breaches happen to everyone.
2. Reset your device. This action will remove any memory resident hacking programs, including keyloggers and malware.
3. Change all your passwords, starting with the most critical websites: banking, email accounts, investment accounts, Amazon or eBay.com, electronic medical record portals, and social media sites.
4. If you are an organization user, immediately notify your security operations team through the internal helpdesk. If you are an individual Gmail user, you can mark the message as spam or phishing and contact Google support at https://support.google.com/mail/answer/1366858?hl=en.
5. Monitor all your online accounts, credit cards, and eCommerce sites for suspicious activities.
6. Ensure you have applied security patches to all devices.
7. Ensure all devices have additional protection, including antivirus and anti-spam software.
Once a phishing attack has breached your Gmail account, these essentials are the starting points. Changing your passwords and enabling two-factor authentication is another critical step.
How Important is Using Strong, Unique Passwords and Enabling Two-Factor Authentication?
Fraudulent emails, suspicious messages embedded with malware, and convincing messages will always be present within all public and private email services. A critical approach to security to help stop phishing attacks from stealing your data, credentials, and money should provide enough motivation for you to change your passwords.
Changing passwords requires more than just typing a name or place you can always remember. Passwords need to be unique and complex enough to stop more hackers from breaking in. No password is ever 100% safe.
Most banking sites, financial services, and healthcare provider portals support two-factor authentication. Enabling his capability protects your critical and discourages hackers from moving to other targets.
Two-factor authentication is essential to protect your Gmail account. Google offers Google Authentication and prompts Gmail with a second factor, asking you if you are connecting.
Using Gmail two-factor is simple to enable and works with any device.
How do you get started with Trustifi’s Gmail Phishing Protection Software?
Email phishing has become a much larger global problem for individuals and organizations. More than relying on one layer of protection is required to protect users or yourself optimally. Organizations wanting to layer additional email security will leverage global email security providers like Trustifi.
Trustifi’s global cloud-based email security platform delivers collaborative protection layers with clients leveraging Google Workspace email security solutions. Trustifi increases protection against advanced threats, including AI-enabled email phishing, next-generation spam, and impersonation attacks. With their consolidated platform strategy, Trustifi advanced AI-powered inbound filtering, outbound DLP, email encryption, account takeover prevention, and email archiving.
All from a single management console and an easy-to-use rules and policy engine.
Whether you are looking for an extra layer of protection in your existing Gmail environment or a full-suite solution, the expertise and simplicity Trustifi offers will exceed your expectations. Let’s discuss pricing and a customized email security plan for you.
