Not to be confused to fish and fishing.
Phishing is a fraudulent action or a scam that it can download malicious emails and DMs, and even fake websites. It can phish for real money. Refer to Malicious viruses policy to learn how viruses and malwares work.
According to Wikipedia, Phishing is a form of social engineering and a scam where attackers decieve people into revealing sensitive information or installing malware such as viruses, worms, adware or ransomware. Phishing attacks have become increasingly sophisticated and often transparently mirror the site being targeted, allowing the attacker to observe everything while the victim navigates the site, and traverses any additional security boundaries. Phishing remains the most prevalent type of cybercrime globally. While the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Internet Crime Compliant Center historically ranked it at the top, the threat has intensified significantly due to the integration of generative AI, which enables attackers to launch highly convincing, automated and hyper-targeted phishing campaings at an unprecedented scale.
The term "phishing" was first recorded in 1995 in a cracking toolkit AOHell, but may have been used earlier in the hacker magazine 2600. It is a variation of fishing and refers to the use of lures to "fish" for sensitive information.
Measures to prevent to reduce the impact of phishing attacks include legislation, user education, public awareness, and technical security measures. The importance of phishing awareness has increased in both personal and professional settings, with phishing attacks among businesses rising from 72% in 2017 to 86% in 2020, and reaching 94% in 2023.
Phishing techniques and vectors include email spam, vishing (voice phishing), targeted phishing (spear phishing, whaling), smishing (SMS), quishing (QR code), cross-site scripting and MiTM 2FA attacks.
If the attacker's content violates the Phishing policy, we may ban attackers.
