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Current Trends and new Techniques Used in Spear Phishing Campaigns
Ing. Vladimír Šulc, Ph.D., Police Academy of Czech Republic in Prague, Faculty of Security Management, Department of Management and Informatics

The main aim of this research consists in testing hypothesis that an ordinary user is not able to detect phishing not a bit of sophisticated spear phishing campaign targeted at him, and traditional security controls based on antiphishing filters, SPF and DKIM fail as well. To test this hypothesis we decided to perform analysis of last phishing and spear phishing campaigns in the world we have detected in last few years. On the basis of this research we prepared a simple phishing campaign and tested the reaction of recipients, employees in one commercial organization. The results confirmed our hypothesis; employees were not able to detect phishing in most cases and the current technical measures failed as well. On the basis of this test additional security measures were accepted and implemented.
Keywords: phishing, spear phishing, zero-day, social engineering, puny code, security controls, SPF, DKIM, DMARC, mail header, certificate.


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