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Phishing attempts to gain access to personal information about an Internet user through fake websites, emails, or short messages to commit identity theft.

Further information on phishing.

Social engineering is a common method of manipulating people, so they give up confidential information. The attack target is always the human.

Criminals use social engineering tactics because it is usually easier to exploit your natural inclination to trust than to discover ways to hack your software. For example, it is much easier to fool someone into giving you their password than for you to try hacking their password (unless the password is really weak).

To obtain confidential information, it is very often the good faith and helpfulness and the uncertainty of a person exploited. From fake phone calls to people pretending to be someone else to phishing attacks, anything is possible.

Social networking sites have made social engineering attacks easier to conduct. For example, today's attackers can go to sites like LinkedIn and find all of the users that work at a company and gather plenty of detailed information that can be used to further an attack.

Further information on Social Engineering.

Spam email describes mass unsolicited emailing of promotional content that often contains infected attachments or links that lead to infected web pages.

Ransomware is malicious software that infects your computer and displays messages demanding a fee to be paid for your system to work again.

Ransomware is a criminal moneymaking scheme, and the attackers can install the malicious software through deceptive links in an email message, instant message, or website. In addition, it has the ability to lock a computer screen or encrypt important, predetermined files with a password.

Typical attacks usually ask for $100 to $200. However, other attacks seek much more, especially if the attacker knows the data being held hostage can cause a significant direct financial loss to a company. As a result, cybercriminals who set up these scams can make big sums of money.

No matter what the scenario, even if the ransom is paid, there is no guarantee that computer users will be able to reaccess their systems. While some hackers direct victims to pay through Bitcoin, MoneyPak, or other online methods, attackers could also demand credit card data, adding another level of financial loss.

Don't pay the ransom as you may not get your files back even if you pay the ransom. In addition, a cybercriminal could ask you to pay again and again, extorting money from you but never releasing your data.

In 2016, European police forces joined forces in the fight against ransomware. Read more on nomoreransom.org.

Detailed statistics about ransomware and the estimated financial damage it causes can be found here.

A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is a type of malicious code or software that looks legitimate but can take control of your computer. A Trojan is designed to damage, disrupt, steal, or in general, inflict some other harmful action on your data or network.

A Trojan seeks to deceive you into loading and executing the malware on your device by acting to be the desired game or the song you like so much. You might also, for example, think you’ve received an email from someone you know and click on what looks like a legitimate attachment. But you've been fooled. The email is from a cybercriminal, and the file you clicked on - and downloaded and opened - has gone on to install malware on your device. Once installed, a Trojan can perform the action it was designed for.

Trojans usually are employed by cyber thieves and hackers trying to gain access to users' systems. They can enable cyber-criminals to spy on you, steal your sensitive data, and gain backdoor access to your system.

Malware (= malicious software) is the umbrella term for malicious programs that run unnoticed in the user's background.

Put simply, Malware is any piece of software written with the intent of damaging devices, stealing data, and generally causing a mess. Viruses, Trojans, spyware, rootkits, and ransomware are among the different kinds of malware.

Teams of hackers often create malware: usually, they're just looking to make money, either by spreading the malware themselves or selling it to the highest bidder on the Dark Web. However, there can be other reasons for creating malware, too - it can be used as a tool for protest, a way to test security, or even as a weapon of war between governments.

More about malware.

CEO fraud is a sophisticated email scam that cybercriminals use to trick employees into transferring money or providing them with confidential company information.

Cybercriminals send savvy emails impersonating the company CEO or other company executives and ask employees, typically in HR or accounting, to help them out by sending a wire transfer. Often referred to as Business Email Compromise (BEC), this cybercrime uses spoofed or compromised email accounts to trick email recipients into acting.

CEO fraud is a social engineering technique that relies on winning the trust of the email recipient. The cybercriminals behind CEO fraud know that most people don't look at email addresses very closely or notice minor differences in spelling.

These emails use familiar yet urgent language and clarify that the recipient is doing the sender a big favor by helping them out. Cybercriminals prey on the human instinct to trust one another and on the desire to want to help others.

“To spoof” means to trick or deceive and is an apt description. For example, criminals send emails with the intent to deceive recipients with phishing or blackmail schemes.

This is done, for example, by sending emails from fake sender addresses, which may look like trusted and known sender addresses. Cybercriminals register domains for this purpose that are very similar to the imitated sender addresses and, at first glance, do not raise any suspicions.

Another method used by hackers is the manipulation of email headers. Here, the Sender field is changed so that it is hard, or impossible, to distinguish it from the original.

This allows the sender to send messages that appear to come from a known or trustworthy source, in some cases even from your own account.