Cybercriminals constantly find new ways to deceive people, and vishing — or voice phishing — is one of gaining traction.
Vishing involves using phone calls or voice messages to trick victims into divulging sensitive information, such as passwords, financial details, or personal data.
In this article, we’ll explore common vishing examples to help you understand how they operate and how you can protect yourself.
What is Vishing?
Vishing is a form of phishing that occurs over the phone. Attackers impersonate trusted entities, such as banks, government agencies, or tech support, to manipulate individuals into providing private information.
Leveraging recent progress in synthetic media, they can also use voice cloning software to impersonate C-level and trusted people.
They often create a sense of urgency or fear and leverage authority, convincing the victim that immediate action is necessary.
Understanding the methods used in vishing attacks is crucial for identifying and preventing them. Let’s look at some typical vishing examples.
Examples of Vishing Attacks applied to Private Individuals
1. Bank Fraud Calls
In this common vishing scenario, a scammer impersonates a bank representative and calls the victim to inform them of "suspicious activity" on their account.
They may claim that unauthorized transactions have occurred and that they need to verify the victim’s personal and banking details to secure the account.
How it works
Pretext Usually, attackers will have bought or research a good amount information before calling their victim.
Using OSINT and information brokers, they might have your Social Security Number, phone, address and birthdate, and they will use this information to try to prove that they are in fact, the bank that already has all this information.
Deception: fear, urgency and authority Like all social engineering attack, the attacker will use deception mechanisms to create an emotional response that will take over your rational thinking and make you more compliant to the attack.
- They will create urgency by warning you that failure to act immediately could result in loss of funds, legal issues or freezing of the account
- They can sometime claim to be from a law enforcement agency, working with the bank, bringing additional authority to their pretext
- Fear and urgency will be more generally created by the fact that they pretend an ongoing fraudulent activity
Exploitation: loss of funds In this type of attacks, the goal is often to get you to transfer funds to a supposed secure account, while the bank or law enforcement team will be freezing the accounts to protect you from further fraudulent activity.
At least this is what they say.
This will result in loss of funds, you will never get the money back.
How to detect it
Banks will never ask for sensitive information like PINs or passwords over the phone.
Bank employees or law enforcement agents will never ask you to transfer your money to a different account.
Always hang up and contact your bank using the official number provided on their website or your bank statements.
Most scammers will be able to spoof their phone number so it looks like your bank is calling, but they won't be able to intercept your call to the official number (if they do, you have bigger problems).
Just like in all social engineering attacks, knowing about the scams doesn't protect you, you also need to be mindful about the emotional manipulation going on, leveraging fear, urgency and authority.
This usually comes from repeated training and exposure to these mechanisms.
2. Tech Support Scams
In a tech support vishing attack, the scammer poses as a representative from a well-known technology company (e.g., Microsoft, Apple). They call the victim, claiming that their computer has been infected with malware or that unusual activity has been detected.
How it works
Pretext The attacker might call the victim directly, but we also see a lot of these attacks starting with a popup on a malicious website pretending to be from the victim's system, asking to call a number.
The attacker will pretend to be from a reputable and well-known technology company and will help to provide support.
The scenario is simple: the victim's computer is "infected" and a support team can intervene to help remove the dangerous malware that could cause all sorts of trouble.
Deception: fear, urgency and authority You'll see a trend here but we have the same pressure mechanisms here.
Fear & Urgency: the attacker explains that if the victim doesn't fix the situation, the computer might stop working or worse, the malware could leak sensitive information, steal money, etc.
Authority: by endorsing the identity of the support team from a reputable brand, they gain instant authority to the eyes of the victim.
Exploitation: loss of funds Most of the time, they will request payment for their service at the end of the "support" call. During the process of "removing the malware" they often ask the victim to install a remote access software they can use to steal information or ransom the victim.
How to detect it
Legitimate tech companies do not call customers unsolicited to report computer problems. Be wary of anyone requesting remote access to your device or payment for unrequested services.
Also, no legitimate company will have intrusive popups come out with a phone number for you to call the support line.
3. Government Agency Impersonation
Scammers often impersonate government agencies, such as the IRS or Social Security Administration, to intimidate their targets. The caller may claim that there are legal issues, unpaid taxes, or problems with benefits that need immediate resolution.
How it works
Pretext There are a lot of variations on these attacks. Attackers will pretend your passport might have come up in a sensitive case, your computer or bank account might have been compromised by serious criminals and used to do reprehensible actions that might bring you to court...
Deception mechanisms By pretending to be a government agency, attackers gain instant authority.
The attacker also uses fear tactics, threatening legal action, arrest, or suspension of benefits unless the victim provides personal information or makes an immediate payment.
The "payment" can also be a fund transfer to a "secure account" to avoid the freezing of assets.
On top of this, they may request Social Security numbers, credit card details, or bank account information.
Exploitation Usually, these scams are used to steal funds, but they can also collect enough data to commit identity fraud down the road or multi-stage attack as a follow-up.
How to detect it
Government agencies typically communicate through official mail, not unsolicited phone calls.
They will never demand sensitive information or payment over the phone. If you receive such a call, hang up and contact the agency directly using verified contact details.
4. Voicemail Phishing (Voicemail Vishing)
In this method, the attacker leaves a voicemail pretending to be from a legitimate organization, such as a bank, government agency, or business. The message often contains a callback number and an urgent request for information.
How it works
The voicemail might state something like, "Your account has been compromised. Call us back immediately to verify your information." When the victim returns the call, they are connected with a scammer who attempts to extract sensitive details.
Because the victim is calling back, the attacker have more legitimacy than if they were calling and trying to conduct the attack from the first call.
The deception mechanisms are the same than for the previous scams as it's just a two-step process to execute the vishing examples shown above.
How to detect it
Be cautious of voicemails asking for personal information or a call back.
Always verify the authenticity of the caller by contacting the organization directly using official contact information.
Examples of Vishing Attacks applied to Organizations
At Arsen, we secure organizations against social engineering attacks. Although the training that employees receive will be useful in previous situations, we execute vishing simulations in an organization context.
Here are vishing examples, applied to an organization context.
Access Request
In this vishing example, attackers will use vishing as an initial access vector by targeting the IT support team of the company.
How it works
The Target Attackers will target the IT support of the targeted company.
The Pretext They will pretend to be an employee of the company, locked out of their system.
The goal Their goal is to have the IT support change the password or the multifactor authentication so they can log in and obtain access to the account.
How to defend against it
First, there should be strong processes before any access modification from the IT support. These processes should involve a strong authentication process to make sure the person calling is really an employee.
Second, the IT support team needs to be trained and tested against these attacks to make sure they can detect the deception and threat and apply the process despite the deception techniques that might be used.
Finally, technical measures such as biometric authentication or blocking calls from numbers outside the organization can help reduce the exposure of the IT support team to these attacks.
Malware installation
In this example, the attacker will use vishing to make the victim open an attachment or install a program on their computer, to obtain initial access.
How it works
The target Any employee of the organization can be targeted with this attack.
The Pretext The attacker will pretend to be from the IT support team or from someone of authority related to the victim.
They will either ask them to open a file that contain important information or install an urgent security patch to fix a problem on their computer.
The goal The goal is to install a malware that will provide them with initial access to the company's network.
How to defend against it
In this case, awareness training is the best defense: employees need to be able to detect the deception technique and apply security procedures before opening unknown program on their computers.
Technical measures like a properly configured EDR will help detect the malware installation, but we all know they can be bypassed.
CEO and wire Fraud
How it works
The target Anyone with the access level to wire money out of the company can be targeted.
The pretext The attacker will use the identity of a vendor or a C-level to request payment.
Note that with recent progress in voice cloning, a new generation of vishing CEO fraud attacks is coming and is really hard to detect based on voice only.
The Goal Here, the goal is simple: getting money from the company.
How to protect against it
Here again, processes for critical operations such as wire fraud should be applied.
To make sure someone cannot be manipulated out of executing the process, they need to be trained with realistic simulations so they can build the reflexes to detect and report these attempts.
On top of this, having a payment solution that will require double confirmation before allowing any new payment will add friction and control points throughout the wire transfer and help defeat this kind of attacks.
How to Protect Yourself and your Company from Vishing
- Security software: from EDRs to payment fraud prevention solutions, to biometric identification, security solutions will help reinforce your defenses against vishing
- Processes: from calling back the official number to following authentication procedures, strong processes should be known and applied
- Awareness training: in order for employees to detect incoming attacks, to follow the process and apply security procedures strong awareness training should be put in place.
At Arsen, we emphasize the importance of employee awareness training to recognize vishing and other social engineering attacks. We have a vishing simulation solution to help train strong reflexes against these vishing examples.