Grassroot Crypto Education | Series 2 Volume 9 - Scams in the Crypto Ecosystem (Part 2)- Phishing and Dusting Attacks |

What is your understanding of Phishing Attack? Discuss any 2 types.

What is Dusting Attack? How can one Avoid being a victim of the two attacks discussed?

Hello everyone. I hope you are all having a wonderful week. It is always a pleasure to participate in the crypto contest organized by the community. I actually do enjoy learning more about crypto from this community.
Moving on to this weeks lecture, which is talking or teaching us about ways and means people out there (fraudsters) use in stealing or extortion ones digital asset. Which is a very bad thing or act.
So from the lecture we learnt about someof the popular means and ways these fraudsters use.
The first question from the assignment is asking us to briefly explain in our understanding what phishing is.

So phishing in general can be explained as;
the act or way of tricking individuals into divulging or exposing their secret information and using it to steal from them. But when it comes to the crypto ecosystem, it can be said to be the act of tricking individuals for their security information and using it to steal their digital asset.
Phishing on the internet started or got more known when people use to use other peoples email and then lure them for their passwords and then have acess to their account. Which they later on steal sensitivity information from the victims account and also use the account for illegal activities.

Originally, phishing was known as the act of using falsify electronic mail messages created by a fraudster which the fraudster makes the message look like it's from a trusted agent.
These messages created by the fraudsters asks or commands a user to take some form of actions, like they should provide their username and password to redeem a reward or to strengthened thier accounts security for their own good.
Also, these type of messages are made to look urgent and followed with warnings like, if you don't take the action, your account might be suspended or you may loose your assets. Which is all made up to steal from someone.

TWO TYPES OF PHYSHING

As of today, with the advancement of technology, fraudsters or scammers have advanced a lot too. So there are so many different types of phishing scam techniques as at now. All that a person needs to do is to be very careful out there and have some basic
Knowledge about phishing.

1. The most common type of phishing experienced by crypto ecosystem is the reward phishing attacks. This type of attacks are made solely to target victims in the cryoto world. Even blockchain is very hard to be tampered by a fraudster. So these fraudsters came up with the idea of trying to lure users to provide their security information in a site they have created in order by telling them that they have won some rewards. Which sometimes will buffle your mind if you are very cautious. Because you will be like what did i do deserve these rewards.
   The reward is usually in a form of a link, and when you tap on it, it will then redirect you to their site where they will receive your security information if you try to do what they are asking you to do get your reward. They will definitely be asking for your log ins. Which they will be using to have access to your account. Also just a tap on the link might render you a victim. Yes, some of these phishing links are very strong to the extend that all they need is just for you to tap on the link. You tapping on the link automatically downloads some malware to your device which intend grant them full acess to your security information like a private key.
   I was once going to fall as victim to a phishing link. I was asked by my attacker to vote for someone on steemit to redeem some reward. Luckily for me that account was labelled scammer. If i hadn't taken notice of the account's name i would have been a victim too.

screenshots of the fraudster who sent me a reward phishing link

1. Email attack; These attackers will creat a fake message making it look like a real message from your trusted platform. Like binance or steemit.
   Asking you to fill in personal information. In order for them to use those informations to strengthen your account or prevent you from hackers. They could also be asking in order to update your account's information or verify the account. Most of these messages are sent through the spam.

WHAT THEN IS DUSTING ATTACK

Dusting attacking is solely made to attack user who are on the crypto ecosystem. This attack is launched in other to reveal a persons crypto wallet details. It is done by sending few or smaller crypto tokens to random users. It is usaully sent to thousands of wallet addresses in order to get the victims they want. In most cases, links are embedded in the dust. When the site is visited they gain control of your account.

HOW TO PREVENT THE ABOVE MENTIONED WAYS TO PREVENT PHISHING

With the reward phishing attacks, in order to prevent it you should make thoroughly background check about the person offering you the reward to see whi they really are. Also desist from tapping on strange links.

With the e-mail attack, you should at least find out from the official website of the platform what is really going on and ask them question if you feel lost.

In conclusion, we should try our possible and learn more about phishing on the internet. Which will give us more ideas on how to safeguard our selves from these fraudsters.

Best regards
@steemkids
@fredquantum
@ngoenyi