Phishing and Spear Phishing Attacks and SDLC Processes to Enhance Software Security

Network Security: Phishing
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Explain what Phishing and Spear Phishing attacks are. Explain why these attacks have been very successful in the past. Research for some of the examples and post your findings
Phishing refers to a method of social engineering where a hacker, also known as a phisher tries to illegally acquire sensitive information from the internet users by imitating that the electronic message is coming from a trusted source (Saleem et al, 2012). Spear phishing on the other hand is a form of internet hacking that targets a particular group. With spear fishing, phishers cannot randomly target hundreds or thousands of emails, but instead, they can only target people with a common objectives, such as people from the same company (Saleem et al, 2012).
Phishing attacks have been very effective because of the reliability and efficiency of the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) that sends mails without authentication. The SMTP is an internet protocol that relays emails across several networks at high levels that makes it hard to authentic any information at such high transport levels (Saleem et al, 2012). Some of the phishing instances include the publication of private information meant for Sony Entertainment in 2014 and the "Operation Aurora" attack in 2010 that targeted search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, among others (Infosec Institute, 2015).
Explain why a software comes out with so many security vulnerabilities when released to end users. Describe the SDLC processes and where you could enhance the software security and how.
Due to the increased use of computers globally, computer engineers have been forced to come up with bigger software which means more lines of source codes need to be written. This kind of complexity leads to higher chances of making errors, making reliability and security unattainable (Morgenstern & Marx, 2005). According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) is a procedure unde...