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Cyber criminals target large organizations in ‘whaling’ attacks

Cyber criminals are increasingly netting big-fish victims by using a technique called \"whaling\" — a targeted spear phishing attack that aims for large organ...

Federal News Network Staff

October 3, 2011 9:02 am

< a min read

Cyber criminals are increasingly netting big-fish victims by using a technique called “whaling” — a targeted spear phishing attack that aims for large organizations.

According to a mid-year trend report from IBM, the whaling technique is on the rise and has been used to gain access to critical data from big companies and agencies.

The report’s findings come amid what the authors call the “Year of the Security Breach”because of the large number of “high-profile attacks and network compromises that have occurred this year.”

This story is part of Federal News Radio’s daily Cybersecurity Update. For more cybersecurity news, click here.