Nowadays, cybersecurity has become a critical concern as the majority of people strive to protect their sensitive information from being misused by scammers. Cybercriminals use various techniques, such as phishing, smishing, pretexting, and vishing, to obtain private data from any individual or organization. This article aims to explain what is vishing in cybersecurity and how vishing Vishing Definition and Meaning
attacks work.
Vishing Meaning and Definition
The term “Vishing” is the collection of Voice and Phishing. In simple words, it’s a concise term used to introduce voice phishing. The “V” in Vishing stands for “voice,” which works similarly to Phishing but via a phone call/voice message rather than fake emails.
Vishing is a voice-based phishing scam that refers to the use of voice messages or phone calls to grab the victims to get their personal information, such as banking or login details.
However, both phishing and vishing are based on social engineering techniques, but vishing may be more impactful than even phishing. The reason behind it is that vishing is often more immediate and personal because it involves direct contact conversations and a short time to make a strong decision to avoid this scam.
What is Vishing in Cyber Security?
Vishing (voice phishing) is a type of cyber attack in which phishers use voice messages or phone calls to assess sensitive data such as credit card numbers, passwords, and login details of victims to get financial advantages or to conduct other cyber crimes in the future.
The vishing attackers contact the victims, revealing their identity as agents of government agencies or any other well-known organization to win the trust of victims and to get a quick response as well.
In addition, vishing attackers use VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol), caller ID spoofing, dumpster diving, AI voice cloning, and some other techniques or AI tools to hide their location and identity, which makes it more difficult to detect scammers. That’s why vishing is easier to attack than other types of phishing.
The methodology and real-time nature of vishing make it easier and more effective in the field of cybersecurity.
How vishing attacks work
- Targeting: Finding the potential victims is the initial step in conducting the vishing attacks.
- Contacting: After searching for easy prey, scammers try to continue calling their victims via spoofing caller ID.
- Tricking: Requesting personal information such as passwords or login details by threatening account cancellation or luring with rewards.
- Misusing: Attackers use this private data for fraud in the future.
How to Prevent the Vishing Attacks
The best practice to avoid a vishing attack is to cut off the unknown call and not share your personal information with anyone on the phone. Block the suspicious numbers at once. Security awareness training is also a potential way to protect against vishing attacks.