You vs. Social Engineering
Technology has come a long way since its birth. Nowadays, we have the internet, cell phones, social media, YouTube, Netflix, and many more technological innovations. However, even with all these technological innovations, keep in mind that your security is more vulnerable than ever. Security is a major issue and plays a massive role in our everyday lives. A few examples are locking your car, using your email and accessing your banks ATM. These all have security measures designed to keep you safe and protect your privacy. Even with so many security measures, there are people out there who use social engineering to try and breach your security.
Social engineering is the art of manipulating people to the point where …show more content…
The only difference is that baiting promises an item or good that attackers use to bait their victims. For example, a victim could notice a link about free music or movie downloads and become automatically interested. They click the link and sign up. Little do they know they are actually surrendering their login credentials to attackers. A common misconception people have about baiting is that baiting is limited to online schemes (Bisson). That is not true. Attackers can also focus on exploiting human curiosity via physical media. Steve Stasiukonis, VP and founder of Secure Network Technologies Inc., put this to the test. In 2006, to ensure the security of a financial client, Steve and his team infected dozens of USBs and scattered them around the organizations parking lot. Many of the client’s employees were intrigued by these USBs and plugged them into their computer. From there, the USB activated a key logger and gave Steve access to employee login credentials (Bisson). So I guess it is safe to say that Steve’s test was a success, baiting via physical media is a real thing and actually …show more content…
It is a social engineering tactic that does not really scare you like scareware. Instead, it makes your computer files completely inaccessible. Afterwards, the victim is then requested to pay a fee (or ransom), in order to regain access to their files (“Scareware & Ransomware”). Once you pay the ransom, you might or might not even regain access to your files. That is why ransomware is very dangerous. However, ransomware has recently been taken to the next level. This new ransomware, named Virlock, is a sandwich of polymorphic code, malware code, and embedded clean code. It has a nasty feature that allows it to stealthily spread itself via cloud storage and collaboration apps (Sjouwerman). Ransomware is playing by different rules, so it is time to train. Once you train and become more knowledgeable, it will be extremely difficult for attackers to use ransomware against
Technology has come a long way since its birth. Nowadays, we have the internet, cell phones, social media, YouTube, Netflix, and many more technological innovations. However, even with all these technological innovations, keep in mind that your security is more vulnerable than ever. Security is a major issue and plays a massive role in our everyday lives. A few examples are locking your car, using your email and accessing your banks ATM. These all have security measures designed to keep you safe and protect your privacy. Even with so many security measures, there are people out there who use social engineering to try and breach your security.
Social engineering is the art of manipulating people to the point where …show more content…
The only difference is that baiting promises an item or good that attackers use to bait their victims. For example, a victim could notice a link about free music or movie downloads and become automatically interested. They click the link and sign up. Little do they know they are actually surrendering their login credentials to attackers. A common misconception people have about baiting is that baiting is limited to online schemes (Bisson). That is not true. Attackers can also focus on exploiting human curiosity via physical media. Steve Stasiukonis, VP and founder of Secure Network Technologies Inc., put this to the test. In 2006, to ensure the security of a financial client, Steve and his team infected dozens of USBs and scattered them around the organizations parking lot. Many of the client’s employees were intrigued by these USBs and plugged them into their computer. From there, the USB activated a key logger and gave Steve access to employee login credentials (Bisson). So I guess it is safe to say that Steve’s test was a success, baiting via physical media is a real thing and actually …show more content…
It is a social engineering tactic that does not really scare you like scareware. Instead, it makes your computer files completely inaccessible. Afterwards, the victim is then requested to pay a fee (or ransom), in order to regain access to their files (“Scareware & Ransomware”). Once you pay the ransom, you might or might not even regain access to your files. That is why ransomware is very dangerous. However, ransomware has recently been taken to the next level. This new ransomware, named Virlock, is a sandwich of polymorphic code, malware code, and embedded clean code. It has a nasty feature that allows it to stealthily spread itself via cloud storage and collaboration apps (Sjouwerman). Ransomware is playing by different rules, so it is time to train. Once you train and become more knowledgeable, it will be extremely difficult for attackers to use ransomware against