ITPEC FE Subject B April 2024 Question 17

Phishing — one-line summary: identifying a phishing email by its urgency cues and spoofed link.

A company worker receives an email claiming to be from the Administration Department, urging them to update bank account information via a provided link before a tight deadline ("by noon today").

Key phishing indicators in this scenario:
- Sender impersonates an internal department
- Creates artificial urgency with a deadline
- Contains a link to an external/spoofed website (example.com/company-s/paycheck&param=...)
- Requests sensitive financial information

A = phishing — an attack that uses deceptive emails to trick victims into revealing sensitive data by posing as a trusted entity.

B = email directing someone to a spoofed web site — the delivery mechanism is an email containing a link to a fake site designed to look like the real company portal.

Why not others:
- (a) Man in the middle + incorrect digital signatures — MITM intercepts communication between two parties; this scenario is about a fake email, not intercepted traffic.
- (b) Man in the middle + malicious HTTP parameters — again, no traffic interception is described.
- (d) Phishing + incorrect digital signatures — phishing is correct for A, but the attack vector is a spoofed website link, not forged signatures.
- (e) SQL injection + spoofed web site — SQL injection targets database queries, not email-based social engineering.
- (f) SQL injection + malicious HTTP parameters — entirely unrelated to the email deception described.

Key rule: phishing = fake email + spoofed site to steal credentials; urgency + impersonation + suspicious link = phishing red flags.

AI-generated — may contain errors