spear-phishing

British  

noun

1. the practice of sending fraudulent e-mails to extract financial data from computer users for purposes of identity theft, by mimicking a sender that the recipient knows

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Example Sentences

See Examples For:

spear-phishing

Messages in spear-phishing can be more personalised, in an attempt to trick the victim into believing it is from a genuine contact.

From BBC ● May 9, 2025

Searching for and processing raw data also exposes them to potential cyber incidents, including spear-phishing attacks and malware infection.

From Scientific American ● May 8, 2023

In its earlier post-mortem, it blamed “advanced spear-phishing attacks” that compromised an employee who no longer worked at Sky Mavis — but it didn’t explain the exact mechanism of the hack.

From The Verge ● Jul. 6, 2022

Research by Sophos, a cybersecurity company, has shown an uptick in these so-called spear-phishing messages targeting people in Italy, where coronavirus infections have surged in recent weeks.

From New York Times ● Mar. 8, 2020

CrowdStrike shared images of the spear-phishing emails with the AP.

From Washington Times ● Jun. 23, 2019