The Pros And Cons Of Social Engineering

B. Hackers may use a tactic called social engineering to enter your computer, in other

Dhamija, R., Tygar, J. D., & Hearst, M. (2006, April). Why phishing works. InProceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human Factors in computing systems (pp. 581-590). ACM.

According to Mitnick, social engineering in information security simply means the psychological manipulation of people so as to divulge confidential information. It involves some kind of confidence trick with the aim of gathering information, committing fraud or getting access to the system . This is very different for the traditional conning but is one of the processes that the social engineering process that is more complex.

A Social engineering attack is a technique used by the hacker to trick people so they give up confidential information. The most important information the criminals are seeking are peoples’ passwords, bank information, social security number and much more. Reading through the website http://www.social-engineer.org/, I can tell that no one is safe from social engineering attack. One example that makes me think that way is the case of Maario Coleman and Angela Russell. These two guys were able to collect students’ information on the graduation ceremonies and create target lists. The pair then used online databases to find matching social security numbers and birthdates before applying for loans in the students’ names. Social engineering attack

Moreover, many organizations within the public and private sector heavily relies on technology to carry out their day to day operations. Those cyber technologies help make many difficult or tedious tasks easier to do and technology can also carry out many of those tasks more effectively and efficiently than humans can. However, cyber technologies are at risk of espionage, cyber attacks, or other crimes such as theft and fraud (Ammori & Poellet, 2010).

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

The data breaches at Target, Home Depot are reminders to CIOs of how deadly social engineering can be. CIO’s and CSO’s realize the dangers of security problems on a massive scale. These are some deliberate security breaches that happen when an employee shares a password or loses a mobile device. An employee might access a website at work that loads malware onto his PC, which then spreads throughout the corporate network. In other cases, security breaches occur when a disgruntled employee leaves the company and takes with him valuable intellectual property that belongs to the company.

Social engineering is a type of psychological attack where an attacker misleads you into doing something they want you to do. Social engineering is used every day by everyday people in everyday situations. A child trying to get her way in the candy aisle or an employee looking for a raise is using social engineering. Unfortunately, it is also present when criminals, con men, and the like trick people into giving away information that makes them vulnerable to crimes. Like any tool, social engineering is not good or evil, but simply a tool that has many different uses. Social engineering is lying to people to get information. Social engineering is being a good actor. Social engineering is knowing how to get stuff for free. Combining all these

Social engineering also known as people hacking is the art of utilizing human behavior to breach security without the victim even realizing that they have been manipulated. Social engineering can be further broken down to three methodologies.

I agree with Dr. Thomas Plante on social engineering which is an effective way of changing people's behavior (Plante, 2012). I believe social engineering could be a useful tool to achieve public good. For example, banning public smoking has resulted in better cleaner air for all and reducing high risk to lung cancer and many other chronic diseases. We can not control each individual to avoid smoking. However, by making laws that restricted smokers in the use of public space, we can improve overall social conditions.

Social Engineering has become a career for modern day cyber criminals. Thieves are waiting to prey on the vulnerable, and naïve. The situations, as devastating as they are to the victims, are very real. In some cases, unfortunately, the cybercrimes are life-altering and irreparable. This paper will highlight four real-life cases where social engineering techniques were used to obtain personal and corporate information.

Identity theft is one of the growing crimes in the United States due to the fact people do not know how to properly protect themselves against it. Criminals use different methods to acquire the information necessary to steal someone’s identity. Some of the techniques used to commit identity theft are; stealing wallets, acquiring bank information or pilfering through trash to find documents containing PII (FBI, n.d.). Nowadays criminals are able to steal people’s identity using different procedures over the internet without having to compromise their identity. Some of the methods are social engineering, phishing, sending spam messages and malware (OLI, 2013). Criminals use these methods because with the use of technology, identity theft could be accomplished anonymously and without much effort. Also because people lower their guard about securing their personally identifiable information when using the internet, especially when using social networks, they become easy targets to

Social engineering can occur anytime of the day and hour. Not all hackers prepare for a time they plan to take someone information. Hackers is constantly changing the way they hack into thins and it is very hard to keep up with the changes. In conclusion we should be aware of our surrounding and make certain that we are aware when we put our personal

The criminals that are involved in social engineering are pursuing information by tricking you into giving out your passwords or bank data. They also access your computer to corruptly install malicious software that will give them access to your personal information. Common social engineering attacks are emails from a friend, baiting situations like offering new music, phishing attempts like test messages, and etc. Many ways to elude these type of attacks like investigating the matter, delete any invitation for financial information, or reject requests for help or proposals of

With the beginning of internet, various online attacks have been increased and among them, the most popular attack is phishing. Phishing is an online security attack where the hacker targets in achieving sensitive information like passwords, credit card information etc. from the users by making them to believe what they see is what it is. It is the combination of social engineering and technical methods to convince the user to reveal their personal data. The paper discusses about the Phishing social engineering attack theoretically and their issues in the life of human Beings. At the same time this paper also provides different techniques to detect these attacks so that they can be easily dealt with in case one of them occurs. The paper gives a thorough survey of various Phishing attacks along with their preventive measures.