Cybercriminals are most likely to learn information about individuals or organizations to make their attacks more effective through several key sources:
- Social media posts and accounts are a common source, where oversharing can reveal personal details like birthdates, roles, relationships, and other clues helpful for social engineering attacks.
- Reading emails, press releases, and news articles provides cybercriminals insights into organizational structure, projects, and key personnel which can be exploited for targeted attacks.
- Overhearing work-related conversations in public places can also give attackers useful information.
- Public data breaches expose a large amount of personal and professional information that cybercriminals can leverage.
- The dark web is a marketplace where stolen data such as login credentials, personal details, and company information is bought and sold.
- Company websites and business-focused social media such as LinkedIn reveal profiles of employees and their roles, which can be exploited in spear-phishing or whaling attacks.
- Additionally, cybercriminals use social engineering techniques, including phishing and deception based on gathered data, to manipulate victims.
In summary, cybercriminals gather target information from social media, emails, public data breaches, news/press releases, overheard conversations, company websites, and dark web sources to enhance the effectiveness of their attacks.