In the period of the pandemic, businesses are facing multiple challenges and while keeping the ball in motion the organization is shifting to remote work culture. While working from home, video conferencing applications like Zoom are becoming a very popular medium used for discussing plans and work developments.

Everything has its advantages and disadvantages like the Zoom application is getting popular and used by multiple officials, but the cybercriminals took the advantage of this and use the application name. Attackers are using phishing techniques while trapping the users, they generally send an email to the users that contains the details about the Zoom application and infect the victim’s system.

How Attackers Misuses Zoom?

Hackers use phishing techniques, they simply send an email to the victims that says the Zoom application is under update and you need to verify your account if you want to use the application. The phished email headers contain “Zoom- no- [email protected]” which makes it more genuine.

Apart from this technique, most of the emails are sent from legally compromised accounts. Some emails used the new domains like zoomcommunications.com or zoomvideo.com and it is very difficult to verify for Secure Email Gateways that the email is genuine or not.

Why Attackers Execute Such Attacks?

The main motive of these attacks is to steal the user account credentials services that include Outlook, Office 365, and many others by spoofing the login pages. However, the hackers also use multiple methods to beat the security services and it is very difficult to detect phishing pages.

The attacker also used malicious attachments that initiate the login page on the victim’s computer, not on the internet. They also encoded several HTML, JavaScript, and PHP codes, these codes are unreadable to users and security tools. They overlap the URL reputation checkers and remain undetected.

Some hackers also use fake links and redirect the users to the login page that they created on the infected server. They spoofed the whole website and makes it identical and legitimate as the genuine one, it is very easy for the users to get trapped.

Tips to Protect Yourself from Phishing Attacks

• Employ Security Software : Install security software that updates automatically and deal with all the upcoming phishing threats. Antivirus software is capable to detect phishing activity online or offline.
• Use Mult-Factor Authentication : Apply multi-factor authentication to an account that reduces the risk of a phishing attack. Multi-factor authentication requires two or more credentials to log in to an account.
• Never Share Any Information : Do not disclose your personal information (like birthdays, education, employment, and account-related data) over Facebook or any other social sites.
• Don’t Open Attachments : Beware of the attachments sent through the emails. Scan the attachments with the security software before downloading them.
• Take Regular Backup : Make sure that your data is backup regularly to avoid unwanted phishing attacks. Always backup your data to removal storage and keep it in a safe place.
• Don’t Click on Link : Instead of clicking a link directly, you can hover your mouse cursor and check the link is malicious or not. Never open a link directly without conforming to it and check the link starts with HTTPS.
• Avoid Pop-Ups : Never click on a random pop-up that comes to your screen while surfing over the internet. Instead of clicking on the “cancel” button always choose to hit the “X” button.
• Update Software Regularly : Continually, update your software as required because the updates fixed the patches accordingly and reduce the risk of a phishing attack.
• Conduct User Awareness : The best way to reduce phishing attacks is awareness. Conduct regular programs and aware your employees of this threat.
• Apply Phishing Filter : Install and configure the phishing filter for your email application and also for the web browser. This filer protects you from random phishing attack and also reduce the malicious phishing attempts.

Summering Up

Various hackers use updated technologies while executing attacks. If the users are not smart and updated about these techniques then they may fall into the trap and their system is compromised.Organizations have to conduct awareness programs that highlight these attacks and how they are prevented while securing the data.