Attacks, the initial stage of which is the actions of an attacker who use the methods of social engineering, are currently one of the most common types of attacks. When using social engineering, an attacker seeks to obtain confidential information and access to various segments of the enterprise of interest, through psychological influence and manipulation of users. In order to successfully carry out an attack with the help of social engineering, it is necessary to gain the trust of a "victim", which is successfully carried out via targeted (personalized) phishing. Due to the relative ease of implementation, there is a rapid increase in the use of targeted phishing attacks on both home PCs and computers of employees of big companies. Targeted phishing attacks are carefully thought out to influence a certain type of people, and it is almost impossible to teach users to distinguish them. This article describes the concepts and methods of targeted phishing, as well as solutions and ways to protect against this type of attack. In addition, this article is an attempt to teach users to recognize targeted phishing emails. The article provides examples of attacks using targeted phishing.
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