What is Spear Phishing?
Spear phishing is the use of spoof emails to persuade people within a company to reveal their usernames and passwords. Unlike phishing, which involves mass-mailing, spear phishing is small-scale and well-targeted. The spear phisher mails users in a single business. The emails appear to come from another member of staff at the same company and ask you to confirm a username and password. A common tactic is to pretend to be from a trusted department that might plausibly need such details, such as IT or Human Resources. Sometimes you are redirected to a bogus version of the company website or intranet. When you reply, the phisher takes the details and misuses them.
