Characterization of Phishing Attacks and Techniques to Mitigate These Attacks: A Systematic Review of The Literature

Abstract

In Computer Security, it does not matter which
Software or Hardware equipment is installed, because
always the weakest link in this security chain, is the end
user. From this premise are used the different types of
Social Engineering attacks, whose main objective is
to obtain information almost directly from the users,
with the purpose of using this information against
themselves. There are several attack vectors of Social
Engineering, among which stand out: fake web pages,
malign messages on social networks, and malicious
emails that ask for confidential information from users
or even redirect users to a fake web page (Phishing).
The objective of this paper is to provide end users and
other researchers with a look at the types of Phishing
attacks that exist, and how they can be mitigated. For
this, first, a systematic review of the literature in the
main scientific sources is carried out, to characterize
and classify the different types of Phishing attacks, and
subsequently, the means by which these attacks can be
mitigated are exposed and classified, ranging from a
user awareness to the use of Machine Learning (ML)
and Deep Learning (DL) techniques.