Social Engineering Attack Essay

The use of information technology in business presents major security challenges, poses serious ethical question, and affects society in significant ways. Especially, the computer crime is a growing threat to society and is caused by the criminal or irresponsible actions of individuals who are taking advantage of the widespread use and vulnerability of computers and the Internet and other networks. It presents a major challenge to the integrity, safety, and survival of most business systems.

In today’s world technology has evolved to the point where a large amount of information is stored in cyberspace. It is because of this type of storage people around the world have an easier time at accessing information than ever before. The time before the late 20th century gathering information was long and tedious to get a book that the library did not own would take at least a couple of weeks depending on the time period or it may not have been possible to obtain that book. But now people can access a vast amount of information in a matter of minutes. Example, in modern times if someone wanted to know about a different culture they could simple look up the information on a computer or any device that had access to

Some examples of social engineering include piggybacking, shoulder surfing, and pretexting (Boyle & Panko, 2015). Piggybacking is an act of following someone through a secure door without entering a pass code. Shoulder surfing is when the attacker looks over someone’s shoulder when he or she types a password, and pretexting is when the attacker calls claiming to be a particular customer in order to get private information about that customer (Boyle & Panko, 2015). Besides those three examples above, we also have baiting, quid pro quo, and water holing which are other types of social engineering attacks.

The social interaction theory is the theory that aggression is used as an adverse social influence, a decision for a what’s perceived as a more positive outcome (Tedeschi & Felson 1994). An example of this would be blackmailing someone to get them to do something for you.

Attacks on critical infrastructures do not always target the vulnerabilities in the systems themselves. One of the weakest links in security is the human factor. Social engineering targets this, and it has worked very effectively for them. According to Raj Samani and Charles McFarland, social engineering is “the deliberate application of deceitful techniques designed to manipulate someone into divulging information or performing actions that may result in the release of that information” (Samani and McFarland 6). Social engineering attacks are divided into two categories: hunting and farming. In hunting, the attacker wants to extract information from the target with little interaction. An example would be a phishing

Social Engineering is coined as the art of human hacking. While it is great to be ahead of the game with all those fancy firewalls, switches and routers many companies fall short on one of the most important aspects of security, Social Engineering. Social Engineering is the one thing that will not trigger a single alarm and will bypass all of a company’s defenses. In a scenario, a few investigators show up at your local office and show their badges and ask for a tour of the place. You 're legally required to allow these investigators access in order for them to do their job. They ask a plethora of questions, even some that may seem out of the ordinary, looking at your physical security systems, asking for passwords, taking any readings they can off of everything and storing the information. They seem to be experts at their job, so you don’t question any of their alarming methods; however, they are actually security consultants conducting a Social Engineering 'penetration test ' or experiment and grabbing access cards, installing keystroke loggers, stealing passwords and generally getting away with as much of your business 's private information as they can get their hands on. Social engineers take advantage of human behavior and they aren 't worried about getting through your firewalls, switches, routers or other online defenses. Even your ‘fancy’ biometrics won 't mean much if your users are tricked into clicking on a malicious link they think came from a friend on the

Technology’s proliferation through the years has caused the demand for security and privacy to expand highly. The ever increasing number of unethical hackers, pulling lighthearted pranks, to framing people, creating servers for transferring illegal files on an unknowing users laptop, to stealing identities, bank account numbers, money, or unauthorized information is becoming alarming and thus is a stint on every computer and online user’s privacy. According to a survey held by PricewaterhouseCoopers with 664 respondents to the survey commissioned by the Department of Business, Innovation, and Skill (BIS) that there has been an increase of information system breaches up from 81% in 2014 alone. In small organizations, the percentage of security breaches from malicious software has gone up to 36% compared to 2014’s figures.

Overall information systems hardware, software, networks and data resources need to be protected and secured to ensure the effective performance of an organization. One security technique used by organizations to protect their computer systems from security threats is encryption this is a method used by organizations to send data to others it works by using special mathematical algorithms to convert the data into scrambled code before transmission and when the data is received it is decoded when an authorized user accesses it. In my opinion, this is very effective because it stops people from being able to read or use data if they intercepted it as the is in a scrambled letter and number form. Another

When the term social engineering comes to mind, one thinks of movies and a complex scheme to bypass security, be it physical or Information Security. Mouton et al describe a social engineering as, “The “art” of influencing people to divulge sensitive information is known as social engineering” (2016). This deceptive form of trickery is used convince a target or victim to divulge information that will be useful to the attacker, this is also known as a social engineering attack (Mouton et al, 2016). We will examine the many of the popular forms of social engineering used today, along with their impacts on individuals and organizations as a whole. Lastly, we will examine techniques at the individual and organization level used today to mitigate the effects of social engineering.

Ans: Social engineering is the art of gaining access to buildings, systems or data by exploiting human psychology, rather than by breaking in or using hacking techniques. The types of information these criminals are seeking can vary, but when individuals are targeted the criminals are usually trying to trick you into giving them your passwords or bank information, or access your computer to secretly install malicious software–that will give them access to your passwords and bank information as well as giving them control over your computer.

At the heart of social psychology is a phenomenon of social influence. Every single person is influenced by others. Sometimes we are influenced by persuasion, where another person deliberately tries to change another individual and their way of thinking and behavior (Baumesiter, 2010) Social influence is happening now on television and across America. For example, the Presidential candidacy. Each

In today's world there is an abundance of information. When you think of hackers you normally think of individuals who use technology to gain access to information that is not otherwise available. In a lot of cases this can be true but there are other ways to gain access to information that requires little technical knowledge. A lot of this information is available freely without restrictions. Social engineering takes advantage of this fact to acquire additional information by manipulating perceptions of those disclosing the needed information.

In order for ZXY Inc. to make sure that their entire organization is secure, some proposals have been put into place to protect the company. The company needs to make sure that the network, their employee’s, company devices, and communications are secure from the outside world. The proposals that have been put into place cover such areas as: access control methods, authentication, user’s accounts and passwords, cryptography, remote access, network attack mitigation, malware and device vulnerabilities, and web and e-mail attack mitigation. These proposals

A 11 year old girl is on snapchat. Her phone is not working. Then pops up a message that says there is a problem and if you press this button the problem would be solved. She pressed the button without thinking.It fixed the problem,but 30 minutes later she found her private pictures that she hadn’t posted on snapchat. I wanted to research this project because a ton of people are getting hacked. It’s very dangerous. Especially,when people are hacking confidential government files.Which is very bad for our government,and the people who live in the United States.The countries that are at war with the United States like Russia.North Korea,and etc could steal private information from the united states and show it to other countries.While I was researching the topic of cyber hacking,I had several questions in mind.Do the hackers get paid for hacking peoples accounts?How do the hackers get into people's accounts? What is the point of hacking people? If the hackers are working with companies,what is the company's name?My driving question was: What can we do as a community to solve the problem of hackers.After reading several articles and watching videos.I think that it is a very clear that today's society can find a way to prevent hacking.

As the world becomes more and more reliant on computers the computer hacking industry is greatly rising. With people such as Kevin Mitnick, who is known as a "computer terrorist" (Kjochaiche 1), computerized information isn't safe any more. Kevin is known as "the most high-profiled computer criminal and responsible for more havoc in the computer world today."(1) He considered this a fun and easy task. He got caught and thrown into prison, but once he got out nothing changed. Kevin stated that as long as the technology is there it just calls to people to break into it. Computer hackers usually start off young, thinking that it is nothing but a little harmless fun. But as they get older, they realize it has turned into