Social Engineering

Social Engineering

Definition An attack based on deceiving users or administrators at the target site. Social engineering attacks are typically carried out by telephoning users or operators and pretending to be an authorized user, to attempt to gain illicit access to systems.

Examples Example #1: (Believe it or not, this has worked for some attackers!) 1. An attacker, posing an a system administrator, sends an email to several users on a large network (like a college campus network) and asks them to, “Please change your password to ‘xyz123’ and then notify me when you've completed this.” 3. The attacker then logs in as one of the users from over the network. 4. System bugs are then exploited to gain complete control of the system.

Countermeasures – Educate staff – Establish mechanisms for problem reporting and handling and make sure users know what those mechanisms are – Identify security-related transactions that must be done in person