There are mechanisms which allow use of the methods we've presented on a massive scale.
Now we would like to show you an example of a social engineering attack
I'm sure that each one of you have received an email similar to the one presented in the slide.
We've all learned that if you get an e-mail entitled I love you from a person you don't know in a language
you don't understand.
It's not the best idea to open the attachment to see who is the one that loves you.
Nowadays administrators and users know that too.
But in a time when such e-mails were circulating it was a very successful type of attack.
In the year 2000 a hacker known as Spider wrote a simple script in Visual Basic and named the file love
letter for you.
TXI TV B-S
most users weren't able to see the vb file extension because by default Windows hides extensions of
unknown files.
The risk connected with opening the file may have appeared marginal so it was ignored by three million
people
everyone receives email such as the one you see above such emails and form the addressee that he or
she has won a prize that must be collected at once.
Or that there is a very profitable job available.
It is only required that you send back your address and personal data.
Strange that they never want your credit card number.
Why are such email sent on such a massive scale.
One of the potential goals is to find a person who would withdraw money from an account.
It's usually money stolen from credit cards whose numbers were leaked to the Internet.
At first it's virtual money only.
So one must go to a cash machine and withdraw the money.
Those who do usually get detained after the affair is revealed.
However manipulation techniques such as these were straightforward and clumsy.