Difference between Spear Phishing and Whaling

Spear Phishing

Spear Phishing is a type of email phishing attack where a personalized email is sent to a specific person or to the organization. The user is tricked to click on a malicious link which seems to be legitimate. When the user clicks on the link, and puts his/her details then attacker steals that sensitive information like login credentials, credit, and debit card details or any other sensitive information.

Whaling

Whaling is again a type of email phishing attack where top officials like CEO, COO, CTO, etc. are targeted. The attacker sends a mail with a malicious link that looks to come from an authentic source.

The following are some of the important differences between Spear Phishing and Whaling.

Sr. No.	Key	Spear Phishing	Whaling
1	Targets	Spear Phishing targets a specific group of people.	Whaling targets top officials of an organization.
2	Focus	Spear phishing focuses on stealing login credentials/ sensitive information.	Whaling focuses on fetching trade secrets which can affect a company's performance.
3	Designing	Spear Phishing emails are prepared for a group of people.	Whaling emails are highly customized for specific persons.
4	Target	Spear Phishing targets low profile individuals.	Whaling targets high profile individuals.
5	Prevention	To prevent spear phishing, we should educate people about such an attack	To prevent whaling attack, education, awareness helps and each URL should be checked before opening.

Mahesh Parahar

Published on 16-Apr-2020 06:04:03

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