What is Social Engineering

“The act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information..”

Wikipedia (also sourced on social-engineer.org)

Origin of “Social Engineering”

Social Engineering this word came in the year of 1894 by a Dutch guy.

Social Engineering is there 100 years ago also.

The person who do Social Engineering we call as Conn Artists

Some Popular Conn Artists in 20th

Century

Victor Lustig

The person who sold the Eiffel Tower number of times.

Used current events.

He made a deal with Scrap Dealers, selling the structure to them for $40,000.

An extremely good deal for buyers – too good to be true

Hotel Ritz

Social Engineering 40-50 years ago

Frank Abagnale Jr

Frank Abagnale Jr

Fake pilot arrested in cockpit.

He acted as a Lawyer, Doctor and pilot.

Abagnale‟s cons were often check frauds.

Did it will work today ?

Social Engineering in 20th

Century

Kevin Mitnick

20 years ago person named “Kevin Mitnick” brought social engineering in IT security.

He is an American Security Consultant, author, convicted criminal and Hacker.

According to US department of justice, Kevin gained unauthorized access to dozens of computer networks.

Weakest Link

People are the largest vulnerabilities in any network

Social engineering is based on decision making of human being

Motivation

There are variety of motivations exists which includes,

Financial Gain

Self-Interest

Revenge

External Pressure

Cycle of Events

It consists of 4 phases

Information Gathering

Developing Relationship

Execution

Exploitation

Information Gathering

“If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles”

-Sun Tzu

Cycle of Events

Information Gathering A Variety of techniques can be used by an aggressor to

gather information about the target(s). Once gathered, this information can then be used to build a relationship with either the target or someone important to the success of the attack.

Developing Relationship An aggressor may freely exploit the willingness of a

target to be trusting in order to develop rapport with them. While developing this relationship, the aggressor will position himself into a position of trust which he will then exploit

Cycle of Events

Exploitation

The target may then be manipulated by the „trusted‟ aggressor to reveal information (e.g. passwords) or perform an action (e.g. creating an account or reversing telephone charges) that would not normally occur. This action could be the end of the attack or the beginning of the next stage.

Execution

Once the target has completed the task requested by the aggressor, the cycle is complete.

How Social Engineering is accomplished

Telephone

Online

Dumpster Diving

Shoulder Surfing

Reverse Social Engineering

Persuasion

How Social Engineering is accomplished

Telephone

Using telephones to contact individuals of a company to persuade them to divulge in confidential information.

Online

Persuading or gathering information through the use of an online chat.

Dumpster Diving

Looking for information discarded by a company employees.

How Social Engineering is accomplished

Shoulder Surfing Simply looking over someone‟s shoulder while they are using a

computer.

Reverse Social Engineering This is a more advanced method of social engineering and is

almost always successful.

Persuasion Persuading someone to give your confidential information

either by convincing them you are someone who can be trusted.

Biases

Biases are nothing but the deviations from a standard of rationality or good judgments.

There are many types of biasing, but these five are important ones:

Pretexting

Phishing

IVR or Phone Phishing

Baiting

Tailgating

Preventive Measures

Organizations must, on an employee/personnel level, establish frameworks of trust. (i.e., When/Where/Why/How should sensitive information be handled?)

Organizations must identify which information is sensitive and question its integrity in all forms. (i.e., Social Engineering, Building Security, Computer Security, etc.)

Organizations must establish security protocols for the people who handle sensitive information. (i.e., Paper-Trails for information disclosure and/or forensic crumbs)