Security experts have recently identified a new form of phishing attack called "whaling", also known as "Big Fish", in which top executives are targeted with highly focused e-mail specially crafted to their profiles in order to lure them to a malicious website. The malicious website will then attempt to infect the victim's pc with a key logger or spyware to steal the victim's personal information.

This tactic is more sophisticated than the traditional phishing attacks, where phishers send mass mail to potential victims regardless of gender, age and occupation.

In 'whaling', the phisher focuses on a very small group of top executives so they can invest more time in the attack and fine-tune their e-mail message to increase likelihood of success.