ISC2 Systems Security Certified Practitioner (SSCP) Practice Question

In this scenario the attacker is impersonating a very high-level executive (the CEO) and exploiting urgency to manipulate an employee into transferring money. When a social-engineering email specifically targets senior leadership-or leverages their authority to fool subordinates-the tactic is known as whaling. While spear phishing also targets specific individuals, whaling is a subtype that focuses on, or pretends to be, top executives to increase credibility and pressure. Vishing involves voice calls rather than email, and pharming manipulates DNS to redirect users to fraudulent websites, neither of which matches the described attack.