Social Engineering: The Human Side Of Hacking Hackers, and possibly even corporate competitors, are breeching companies' network security every day. The latest survey by the Computer Security Institute and the FBI shows that 90% of the 503 companies contacted reported break-ins within the last year.
The Weakest Link: Social Engineering To demonstrate how easily security breaches happen, I asked our department heads to attend a meeting on social engineering. Much to their dismay I explained how within 30 seconds I could break into our system and gain mid-level access to our (then) state-of-the art system, by making one phone call, without using my access code. They didn't believe me
Social Engineering Fundamentals, Part I: Hacker Tactics One morning a few years back, a group of strangers walked into a large shipping firm and walked out with access to the firm's entire corporate network. How did they do it? By obtaining small amounts of access, bit by bit, from a number of different employees in that firm. First, they did research about the company for two days before even attempting to set foot on the premises. For example, they learned key employees' names by calling HR. Next, they pretended to lose their key to the front door, and a man let them in. Then they "lost" their identity badges when entering the third floor secured area, smiled, and a friendly employee opened the door for them.
Social Engineering Fundamentals, Part II: Combat Strategies This is the second part of a two-part series devoted to social engineering. In Part One, we defined social engineering as a hacker's clever manipulation of the natural human tendency to trust, with the goal of obtaining information that will allow him/her to gain unauthorized access to a valued system and the information that resides on that system. To review: the basic goals of social engineering are the same as hacking in general: to gain unauthorized access to systems or information in order to commit fraud, network intrusion, industrial espionage, identity theft, or simply to disrupt the system or network.
Identity Theft - The Real Cause Looks at identity theft and the seriously devastating effects it can have today. Identity theft can be achieved by utilizing tactics such as the good old dumpster diving. "...6 out of every 7 bins contain information that is useful to a criminal who wants to steal your identity!"
Breaking Point: Forging Chaos and Destruction Written to make novices, experts, and LEA's aware of high tech crime scenarios and how easy it has become to pass forgeries or frame someone in today's world without even having to be a computer expert.
Social Engineering - Skill of Chance This paper describes a social engineering scenario. Social Engineering is the art of having people do what you want, or give you info on passwords, with out them knowing they're doing so.