Vishing
Social engineering over a phone call. The attacker poses as tech support, a bank or a vendor to obtain access or payments in real time.
Full definition
Vishing is voice-based social engineering: a call where the attacker poses as tech support, a bank, a vendor or a colleague to extract credentials, authentication codes or payments. A live conversation lets the attacker adapt the script in real time, something no email can do.
A frequent target is the help desk: the attacker calls pretending to be an employee locked out of their account and convinces support staff to reset passwords or the second factor. Vishing is also combined with emails that announce the call in advance to make it look legitimate.
AI-generated synthetic voice makes this worse, because it can imitate real people. Defense relies on identity verification protocols that do not depend on recognizing a voice, and on training the most exposed teams: support, finance and reception.
Related terms
Social engineering
Psychological manipulation that leads a person to hand over information, access or money. It is the starting point of most successful cyberattacks.
Smishing
Phishing via SMS or mobile messaging. It exploits trust in the phone and the absence of filters: the message arrives direct, short and with a link.
Deepfake
Synthetic audio or video that imitates a real person. Applied to fraud, it turns a video call or voice note into an impersonation tool.
Pretexting
Social engineering built on an invented but plausible story: an audit, a vendor, a technician. The pretext justifies asking for data or access.
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