Spear phishing
nounid
4201·updated May 9, 2026verified
An attack targeting a specific user or group of users, and attempts to deceive the user into performing an action that launches an attack, such as opening a document or clicking a link. Spear phishers rely on knowing some personal piece of information about their target, such as an event, interest, travel plans, or current issues. Sometimes this information is gathered by hacking into the targeted network.
MWE
Attested in
No recorded attestations. They are written when an MWE tagging stage is completed, stamped with the pack version and the document’s digest.
Classifications
Entity Type
Threat90%rule-basedr:entity.threat.attack.v1
Sensitivity
unclassified
Information Class
unclassified
Variants
- plural
- Spear phishings
- possessive
- Spear phishing's
- pluralpossessive
- Spear phishings'
Framework definitions
- §1
- An attack where social engineering techniques are used to masquerade as a trusted party to obtain important information such as passwords from the victim
Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) IT Examination Handbook Infobase, Glossary1 senseview framework →
- §1
- An attack targeting a specific user or group of users, and attempts to deceive the user into performing an action that launches an attack, such as opening a document or clicking a link. Spear phishers rely on knowing some personal piece of information about their target, such as an event, interest, travel plans, or current issues. Sometimes this information is gathered by hacking into the targeted network.
- §1 · legacy_primary
- An attack targeting a specific user or group of users, and attempts to deceive the user into performing an action that launches an attack, such as opening a document or clicking a link. Spear phishers rely on knowing some personal piece of information about their target, such as an event, interest, travel plans, or current issues. Sometimes this information is gathered by hacking into the targeted network.DR-088 backfill from the noun definition column
Outgoing relationships
No outgoing triples
This term is not the subject of any RDF-style relationship yet.
Incoming relationships
No incoming triples
No other term currently asserts a relationship to this one.