How to Find Hidden URLs in Phishing Emails? Simple Detection Tips

Phishing is a dishonest tactic in which a hacker replicates the identity of a reliable company or person in order to trick customers into revealing personal information. Through phishing emails and other communication channels, attackers commonly transmit malicious links or files that can extract victims’ account numbers, login credentials, and other private information.

Deceptive phishing is a prevalent cybercrime because it is easier to trick people into clicking on a dangerous link in an email that seems legitimate than it is to get past a computer’s protection.

The average yearly cost of phishing increased by more than 10% between 2024 and 2023, from $4.45 million to $4.88 million, according to the 2024 IBM report.

What are Tactics Used by Cybercriminals?

Cybercriminals employ a variety of strategies to deceive consumers into clicking on phishing or malicious links that might infect their devices and data. These strategies frequently entail concealing the link’s true destination behind a safe or authentic one. Risky connections put your data, computer, and network at risk and direct you to risky websites. Additionally, there are warning indicators you may look out for, even if it might be challenging to tell a malicious URL from a secure one.

How Phishing Emails Look Authentic?

These emails frequently use authentic logos and other tools to create convincing emails that mimic well-known companies. Threat actors can simply clone authentic emails and steal trademarks, but it is more challenging to create a sender’s address that seems authentic. Spoofing techniques are employed by threat actors to generate phony sender addresses that appear authentic. A link’s origin is determined using the domain part of a URL.

Clues to Spot Malicious URLs

In malicious URLs, hyphens and symbols are frequently used.

Reputable websites almost never use hyphens or other symbols in their domain names. Scammers will attempt to deceive you by combining these components with well-known businesses.

Be Wary of Domains That Are Only Numbers

Sometimes a domain will show up as only an IP address with such links, it is impossible to determine who owns the domain. You should refrain from clicking on this type of URL unless you have confirmation of the IP address and know which way the link will lead.

Risks of Shortened URLs

URLs disguised as shorter URLs are most likely malicious URLs.

People frequently use shortened URLs on social networking sites with character constraints. They also include them in emails, texts, and other types of media. Services like Bitly and TinyURL shorten longer URLs to make them easier to share. Despite its convenience, an abbreviated URL is a disguise for another site. Use caution while using them; similar to IP address domains, you cannot be sure of the connections’ actual origins.

How to find hidden URLs in Phishing emails in Genuine Content

Scammers may use seemingly authentic URLs to conceal harmful connections.
May include dangerous URLs into links, images, logos, and text that appear to be genuine. However, if you move your mouse pointer over these links, you can see what’s concealed. Compare the URL that is displayed with the URL that shows when you hover over it on your screen. Avoid the hidden URL if there is a noticeable change or if you notice any warning indicators.

The Importance of User Awareness

Because phishing attacks target human weaknesses rather than flaws in software or infrastructure, they represent a significant danger to corporate cybersecurity. The answer is to educate staff members about the dangers and offer technological tools that can assist them in spotting and averting attacks:

Security Awareness Training

Training on security awareness— Phishing emails are intended to fool staff members into doing particular tasks. Employees must get training on how to identify phishing email efforts and react correctly in order to lessen the threat. The company must acknowledge that even with training, the typical employee will not be able to identify and stop every phishing attempt.

How Advanced Software Helps in Finding Hidden URLs in Phishing Emails

An application called MailXaminer can recognize common phishing techniques, including analyze URL for malware, phony email addresses that look authentic, and emails from recognized malicious IPs or domains. Email filtering programs can utilize these indicators to identify phishing emails and prevent them from reaching the intended recipient’s inbox.

• Looking for malicious attachments – attachments are a usual method for malware to spread over email. Organizations can detect and halt the spread of the virus by searching for harmful attachments and testing them within a sandbox environment.
• Data Loss Prevention Solutions – Some phishing attempts aim to use email to obtain private data from businesses. Attackers may, for instance, request that the receiver attach private information and return it. DLP aids in identifying and preventing these instances of data leaks.
• Advanced Anti-Phishing Measures- Dedicated anti-phishing solutions combine many of these safeguards with additional anti-phishing features, like checking email content for language that might indicate a phishing attempt and checking DNS and authentication processes to spot attempts to forge the sender or source of an email.

Advanced Features of the Software

This is an Email forensic software, which would be a good option to employ to protect your devices from malicious links and fraud, as it provides

View the Email and Attachment Analysis

To obtain all of an email’s details, examine deleted, read, unread, or password-protected emails from a forensic perspective. Examine emails from a variety of angles to find any falsified or supporting documentation.

A preview of the attachment is shown in the first section of the attachment pane, while a list of every attachment in the email is shown in the second. “Attachments View” displays the email’s attachment or attachments directly. This feature allows you to check suspicious email attachments of an email’s attached data can be stored on the system for analysis and information extraction.

Properties and Header Details

The user may read the emails’ short information in the “Properties View” mode to obtain all of the condensed facts. Email properties such as Dates, Recipients, Sender details, Message Flags, Subject, and Additional Info are all included. The two key components that offer precise information about a certain email, such as the Message-ID and the Country of Origin, are the Email Header analysis details and Message Flags.

IP Address Tracking

The most fundamental type of identifying criterion utilized in online communication is the Internet Protocol Address. Both governmental and corporate cybersecurity organizations have identified that certain IPs are being used for illicit activities. Investigators may determine whether or not the email is coming from a spammer IP address in criminal investigation with the use of this tool’s category-wise identification method.

IPs are color-coded by the program according to their past conduct. Green represents Normal IP, for suspicious IP, use yellow. For a malicious IP, use red.

HTML View for Email Content

To examine an email’s inside HTML script, users can choose HTML View. This option makes it simple to examine the full content of chosen emails in their original layout. This view will show the comparison points, or the places where someone has made alterations, if anyone has attempted to alter the emails’ uniqueness.

Intelligence for Advanced Analysis of Communications through Links

Use the tool’s built-in advanced link analysis method to visualize, examine, and look into the malicious communications among any number of suspects. Analyze the emails and data shared, and quickly determine the connection between the suspects. Utilize Advanced Search Operators to discover relationships between several people.

Hash analysis for forensics

One may examine and analyze the artifacts in a database heap by using the software’s forensic hash algorithm option. Select the option to display and filter emails using SHA1, MD5, and SHA256 hash values under the Scan Settings tab.

Conclusion

In order to conclude, we know that cybercriminals conceal URLs and trick people into engaging with them using a variety of techniques. Data breaches, ransomware attacks, malware infections, identity theft, and other severe repercussions for your company may result from this. Due diligence is crucial when it comes to URL safety. It’s about making intelligent clicks.

Do not click on a URL if you are unfamiliar with it or if it appears in an email that you did not anticipate. The best course of action when in doubt is to utilize search engines to locate a trustworthy, authentic link. As a result, it’s critical to take certain precautions to shield your company from these risks.