In our previous post we discussed the more technical side of hacking and protection from hacking. It also focused more on how corporations can protect themselves from criminal hackers. This brings us to most prevalent method of hacking systems or getting your information and it isn’t through the use of high tech tools and methods, but just methods and techniques that have been around since before computers. It has been given the term: Social Engineering.
The website Social Engineer defines social engineering as the act of manipulating a person to accomplish goals that may or may not be in the best interest of the target. Like penetration testing, the goal is to gain information, gain access to a system(s); unlike penetration testing, social engineering has the added goal of having the targets themselves perform a certain action. In further contrast to penetration testing or technical hacking which use technology to gain access to a system, social engineering is noticeably lacking in technology.
There are many basic techniques that the Social Engineer will use, and oftentimes will use multiple techniques at once. Unlike technical hacking where patches will render a specific technique useless, the Social Engineer can reuse the same basic tools time and time again, even on the same people.
Please click on the link below to learn about some of the different Social Engineering techniques in action.
No comments:
Post a Comment