Familiarity and trust are unicorns of social engineering attacks. This is because if an attacker can gain your trust, there is a good chance they can get you to do just about anything.
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Social Engineering
It is a known FACT that a lot of people on social media have called out ‘scammers’ or ‘hackers’ on everyone they think is after their private information, yet in most instances users are the ones to blame as they can give out information any how without looking into the possible dangers of doing such.
Here is something interesting, how many times have you received some links through WhatsApp and usually it reads, ‘Here is a chance for you to win a latest phone or free meal. Just click this link.’ After going through to the link it gives unnecessary questions where you have to input your personal details and ask you to share to 5 groups or 20 of your friends on that particular social media platform.
This is very common and we usually follow the link simply because we are trusting the person who will have sent us the message. Not only does this happen to individuals, it also happens to companies, big organizations and so on.
Now let me help you what this whole process is and what is it called. Forget about those who have made you believe in using the word ‘hacking’ on this one. Read through… its called Social Engineering.
By definition, social engineering is the act of exploiting human weaknesses to gain access to personal information and protected systems. It relies on manipulating individuals rather than hacking computer systems to penetrate a target’s account.
Familiarity and trust are unicorns of social engineering attacks. This is because if an attacker can gain your trust, there is a good chance they can get you to do just about anything.
At its core, social engineering is not a cyber-attack. Instead, social engineering is all about the psychology of persuasion: It targets the mind like a con man. The aim is to gain the trust of targets, so they lower their guard, and then encourage them into taking unsafe actions such as divulging personal information or clicking on web links or opening attachments that may be malicious.
One of the greatest dangers of social engineering is that, the attacks don’t have to work against everyone: If it’s a company, a single successfully fooled victim can provide enough information to trigger an attack that can affect an entire organization.
Social engineering attacks have grown increasingly sophisticated. Not only do fake websites or emails look realistic enough to fool victims into revealing data that can be used for identity theft, social engineering has also become one of the most common ways for attackers.
Elon Musk wrote that his goal is to help Twitter fulfill its “potential to become a platform for free speech around the world.”
How does this work?
In a typical social engineering attack, a cybercriminal will communicate with the intended victim by saying they are from a trusted organization. In some cases, they will even impersonate a person the victim knows.
If the manipulation works (the victim believes the attacker is who they say they are), the attacker will encourage the victim to take further action. This could be giving away sensitive information such as passwords, date of birth, or bank account details. Or they might encourage the victim to visit a website where malware is installed that can cause disruptions to the victim’s computer. In worse case scenarios, the malicious website strips sensitive information from the device or takes over the device entirely.
People’s risk perception, competence, and cybercrime experience are the three perceptual factors that are believed to influence their susceptibility to social engineering attacks.
Can I protect myself and my organization against Social Engineering?
Social engineering attacks rely on human error and emotion, which is both their strength and weakness. While psychological attacks test the strength of even the best security systems, companies can mitigate the risk of social engineering with awareness training.
Consistent training tailored for your organization is highly recommended. This should include demonstrations of the ways in which attackers might attempt to socially engineer your employees.
The training will help teach employees to defend against such attacks and to understand why their role within the security culture is vital to the organization.
Organizations should also establish a clear set of security policies to help employees make the best decisions when it comes to social engineering attempts. Examples of useful procedures to include are:
- Avoid tempting offers
- Watch for website certification
- Password management
- Multi-factor authentication
- Email security with anti-phishing defence
In conclusion, the hackers that turn to social engineering expect you to hand over your data because you’re scared, shocked, or confused. Always be attentive when you’re out surfing the web. If anything looks suspicious, it usually is.
