Phishing Attacks in a Mobile Environment

There is no agreed upon definition for Phishing. Although, the medium of attack may vary, the goal is to steal confidential information from an individual. Classical Phishing attacks via mass mailing have a low return of investment rate. Generally, one mass mailing of 100,000 emails may collect between 10 to 100 victims. On the contrary, Phishing scams targeted to a specific group of people in a certain time, dubbed by ”Spear Phishing”, have higher success rate. Mobile environment provides an optimum atmosphere for such scams to succeed. The present study shows new media of Phishing attacks other than traditional emails scams. The study presents how Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mobile applications, and RFID facilitate and increase the potential of success in Spear Phishing. Further, we discuss Phishing examples and show that available defense solutions against Phishing attacks are inadequate in a mobile environment. Therefore, alternatives have to be deemed to fit mobile architectures and applications.