Social Engineering: The Use Of Malicious Intent

Identity theft is the stealing and use of someone’s personal information and is one of the fastest growing crimes in the nation (Dole, 2005). According to Federal Trade Commission estimates, identity thieves victimize approximately 10 million Americans every year at a cost of an astonishing $50 billion (2005). Identity theft has been going on for years now and is easily done with the help of today’s technology. According to the Federal Trade Commission, there are six common ways that identity thieves get a hold of personal information. The varieties of methods that are used are dumpster diving, skimming, phishing, changing the victim’s address, stealing, and pretexting (Federal Trade Commission). Once someone’s identity is stolen,

Tom Van de Wiele, a principal security consultant at F-secure, says, “Real-life attackers, especially criminals, live off perfecting subtle social engineering tricks that trick human beings into letting their guard down. And letting employees believe that cutting-edge security technologies will handle everything gives a false sense of security, which is something today's attackers are counting on.”. Today hackers will use a hacking tactic called phishing, which involves sending emails from someone who seems legit to collect personal information and much more. Some people believe that the internet is fully protected and that everything on it is secured. But people have so much faith in technology instead of using common

This study conducted a large scale phishing experiment in a university with more than 10,000 subjects. The initial phishing attack involved spoofed email that redirects a user to a website to change their password, both males and females in the experiment were equally deceived. The second part of the attack used a survey to harvest personal information, this found that 61% of the victims were males compared to only 39%

It is recommended that we conduct a test that would simulate that breach. The test results should be anonymous as the goal of the test is to improve the company's security posture in a way that improves the entire company's security. After the test is complete, the results should be used to assist in designing training for employees on understanding and dealing with potential social engineering attacks. After developing the training, new policies and procedures should be disseminated, then the training can include understanding and reviewing the new policies and procedures. After the training is completed another test should be done to measure engagement and effectiveness of the social engineering training. This information should be used to improve training. The goal of the training would be to empower employees with situational awareness skills that would assist them in identifying potential social engineering attempts and how to respond

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes statistically according to the Federal Trade Commission. Roughly 27.3 million Americans have fallen victim to this form of theft/fraud. According to last year the loss of money for businesses and financial institutions are in the billions and with consumers out of pocket expenses has been about 5 billion dollars. "Identity theft" refers to crimes in which someone wrongfully obtains and uses another person's personal data (i.e., name, date of birth, social security number, driver's license number, and your financial identity— credit card, bank account and phone-card numbers) in some way that involves fraud or deception, typically for economic gain (to obtain money or

Social engineering is a term many people are not familiar with and the first thing they think of is social networking sites. This is not the case, social engineering is simply using human nature against someone to get information or to have them do something they normally would not do. For example, if someone new asked someone to give out company secrets, they would not, but someone making them feel bad for by putting themselves in a situation they are familiar with they have a better chance of getting that information. Social engineering can be broken up into three main attacks and those are phishing attacks, telephone attacks, and in-person attacks.

Reconnaissance – Attackers may depend on social engineering to gain information, access, and data to a companies inner-working; This include finding out policies, office building security protocols; even dumpster diving for any information that could be used to initiate a scanning procedure. Counter measures for these methods include, enforcing employees to comply with security policies, constantly train employees in the methods of social engineering by attackers; this includes over the phone conversations subjecting an employee into disclosing any type of company information, no matter how innocent the information may seem (an alternative excuse for employees is to refer to company’s website), installation of security cameras, and use

Identity Theft is a growing fear thanks to how easy it is to obtain personal information online and offline. From losing a wallet to having a once trusted company announce a security breech, consumers are always at risk of ever evolving criminals. Sometimes, no matter how carful someone is, their identity is stolen, credit destroyed, and their lives forever changed. However, by utilizing identity theft insurance, consumers receive extra layers of protections and a peace of mind.

Email phishing, one scheme of internet scamming, is a problematic issue in society as it causes millions of people to fall victim to identity theft and financial exploit. Acts such as this could not be more apparent at The University of Alabama during its 2013-2014 school term, when an email headlined “New Year Upgrading” surfaced its way into the inboxes of UA students. In his article “University OIT warns of phishing scams” for The Crimson White, author Josh Sigler cautions students of The University of Alabama to be wary of false advertisement and to refrain from providing personal information, if uncertain. Sigler attests why UA students should be as alert as possible of online scams by appointing advice from a specialist, unveiling past

Passard Dean, Joshua Buck, and Pierce Dean, wrote a journal article about identity theft, which they define as “someone tak[ing] another’s personal information without consent and uses it in an illegal way” (Dean, Buck, & Dean, 2014). People have become targets for identity theft, even more so today, with the increase in technology use. This type of theft occurs usually when the following items are stolen: name, address, social security number, and bank account information. In today’s society, there are three types of identity theft, financial theft, criminal theft, and identity cloning. There are also methods in which “criminals may gain a victim’s information that will enable them to steal that individual’s information” (Dean, Buck, & Dean, 2014). These methods are called low-tech and hi-tech. With the hi-tech method, thieves can acquire information by using technology, where they can skim, phish, and hack. Most importantly, the article disclosed methods of identity prevention. This article recommends keeping information private, destroying documents with personal information, using passwords, and paying attention to details.

"The Art of Deception" is a great read if you are interested in Social Engineering, I also recommend a book called "Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking", by Christopher Hadnagy and Paul Wilson. This book breaks down the various steps you would take in order to perform a successful Social Engineering attack. It also goes into some real world examples of how people use these types of tactics in various professions, especially in sales.

Technical social engineering can come in many different forms, the most common one being phishing. Phishing is used when a hacker sends an “urgent” email that looks like it came from a real business with a link asking for verification or proof often through some form of personal information. The information can vary from bank account information, card information, or personal accounts login credentials. Another tactic that can go along with phishing is

It is the manipulation of people through deception, lies, fabricated story and tricks. They influence and persuade people to obtain information with or without the use of technology. Social engineering is a powerful tool used by cyber criminals’ especially on seniors because of their level of trust.

Attacks on critical infrastructures do not always target the vulnerabilities in the systems themselves. One of the weakest links in security is the human factor. Social engineering targets this, and it has worked very effectively for them. According to Raj Samani and Charles McFarland, social engineering is “the deliberate application of deceitful techniques designed to manipulate someone into divulging information or performing actions that may result in the release of that information” (Samani and McFarland 6). Social engineering attacks are divided into two categories: hunting and farming. In hunting, the attacker wants to extract information from the target with little interaction. An example would be a phishing

Phishing has been studied in the contexts of technical mechanism to prevent phishing attempts (Kumaraguru et al., 2007). Other studies have inquired into the behavioral aspect of individuals towards phishing (Jakoboson et al., 2007; Grazioli, 2004; Downs et al, 2006; Jagatic et al., 2007; Karakasiliotis and Furnell, 2006; Tsow and Jakobbson, 2007; Workman, 2007; Vishwanath et al., 2011; Wright and Marett, 2010; Workman, 2008; Luo et al., 2013; Kim and Kim, 2013). Technical measures against phishing are incapable of preventing phishing due to the fact that phishing plays on the cognitive and psychological aspects of the human cognition.