Glossary
Vishing
Vishing is phishing by phone. Someone calls pretending to be your bank, the IRS, or tech support. They create urgency - 'Your account is compromised!' - to make you reveal passwords or send money. With AI voice cloning, they can even sound like people you know.
What is Vishing?
Voice phishing - social engineering attacks conducted over phone calls to trick victims into revealing sensitive information or taking harmful actions.
Why Should You Care?
Vishing (voice phishing) has risen sharply, accelerated by AI voice cloning that lets attackers impersonate executives, vendors, and support staff convincingly. Attackers frequently target IT help desks and finance departments to reset credentials and authorize fraudulent transfers, bypassing technical controls by exploiting human trust over the phone. Because a successful call can lead directly to account takeover or wire fraud, vishing is a costly and growing attack vector for organizations of all sizes.
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Real-World Example
An attacker calls a company's IT help desk impersonating an employee who is "locked out" before an urgent deadline, supplying personal details gathered from social media to pass identity checks and persuade the agent to reset multi-factor authentication. In a more advanced variant, attackers use AI-generated synthetic voices that mimic a known executive to instruct a finance team member to redirect a supplier payment, exploiting authority and urgency rather than any software vulnerability.
How to Protect Against Vishing
- 1.
Never give sensitive info to inbound callers
- 2.
Hang up and call back using official numbers
- 3.
Train employees on voice-based social engineering
Related Terms
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