Social engineering terminologies and techniques.
Hackers, ethical hackers or PIN testers use social engineering tactics because it's usually easier
to exploit people than it is to discover ways to hack the software.
For example, it's much easier to fool someone into giving you their password than it is for you to
try hacking their passwords.
Social engineering is psychological manipulation of people into performing actions or divulging confidential
information.
The types of information that you seek can vary, but you usually try to trick the targeted victim into
giving you their passwords or bank information or access to their computer to secretly install malicious
software that will give you access to their passwords and sensitive information, as well as giving
you control over their computers.
You usually use the human relations and the intentions of the people in social engineering attacks.
If you have enough information about the company to send a phishing email to the victims as the employer
instead of someone they don't know, you won't believe the results in a social engineering attack.
You get the best results if you use the fear and curiosity of the victims.
Scare them, there is abnormal traffic from your computer to the others, it's probably a worm trying
to spread.
Have you ever visited a website that you shouldn't or downloaded something that you shouldn't trust
or make them curious?
Prepare a CD, drop it next to the victim accidentally and curiosity killed the cat.
Let's explain why the human being is always under attack with the writings of Rick Ferguson, who's
the director of security research and communications at Microsoft.
People are always the weakest link in information security.
You can deploy all the technology you want, but people simply cannot be programmed and can't be anticipated.
As long as an attacker makes their delivery vehicle credible enough, a target is likely to click the
link or open the file.
The bugs in the human hardware are exploited in various combinations to create attack techniques, some
of which are listed on this slide.
Let's talk about the most famous techniques briefly.
Shoulder surfing is simply the technique used to obtain confidential data such as pin numbers and passwords
by observing the information without getting the victim's attention, for example, by looking over
the victim's shoulder.
This attack can be performed either at close range by directly looking over the victim's shoulder or
from a longer range by, for example, using a pair of binoculars or similar hardware.
Shoulder surfing is likely to be performed best in crowded places because it's easy to observe the information
without getting the victim's attention.
Dumpster diving, also known as trashing, is another popular method of social engineering, it's briefly
looking for valuable things in someone else's waste bin.
A huge amount of information can be collected through company dumpsters, company phone books, organizational
charts, company policy manuals, calendars of meetings, events and vacations, system manuals, printouts
of sensitive data or login names and passwords, printouts of source code, etc..
All of this information can be used to assist a social engineering attack to gain access to the target
company's network.
The dictionary meaning of tailgating is to drive to closely behind another vehicle, but as a social
engineering attack technique, tailgating is seeking entry to a restricted area secured by unattended
electronic access control, for example, by an RFID card.
In this technique, you simply walk in behind the person who has legitimate access following common
courtesy.
The legitimate person will usually hold the door open for you, or you yourself may ask the employee
to hold it open for you.
The legitimate person may fail to ask for identification for any of several reasons, or may accept
an assertion that the attacker has forgotten or lost the appropriate identity.
Token, you may also fake the action of presenting an identity token or the action of looking through
your pockets to find your identity token.
During this course, we will see fishing in detail.
For now, let's just talk about the concept in a fishing attack, typically the attackers sends an e-mail
that appears to come from a legitimate business, a bank, a credit card company requesting verification
of information and warning of some terrible consequences if it's not provided.
The e-mail usually contains a link to a fraudulent Web page that seems legitimate with company logos
and content and has a form requesting everything from a home address to an ATM cards pin or a credit
card number.