Social Engineering Abuses

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Social Engineering Abuses

• CIS 5370 - Computer Security
• Kasturi Pore
• Ravi Vyas

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What is it?

• Public Definition from wikipedia.org
• Social engineering is the art of
  manipulating people into performing actions or
  divulging confidential information
• Gartner Research Group
• the manipulation of people, rather than
  machines, to successfully breach the security
  systems.

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Does it Work?

• Kevin Mitinic was incarcerated in February1995
  with more 25 charges.
• In his book Art of deception he stated he did
  not use any hacking tools or software programs
  but used social engineering to obtain the
  passwords and secrets.

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Does it Work?

• Three Israli brothers Ramy, Muzher, and Shadde
  Badir had 44 charges against them.
• Telecommunications fraud
• Theft of computer data
• Impersonation of a police officer
• Damages around 2 million

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Does it Work?

• On September 16, 2008 an internet activist group
  'anonymousgained access to governor Palin's
  email account gov.palin_at_yahoo.com.
• gov.palin_at_yahoo.comDOB 2/11/64ZIP 99687

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Why Social Engineering?

• Its easier to ask the user instead of hacking the
  system
• With the exponential increase in technology it is
  becoming harder to hack in to systems

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Why Social Engineering?
VS
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Why does it work?

• Humans
• We are emotionally weak and like to help
• We easily succumb to pressure
• We cant correctly judge if someone is lying
  bias towards truth and stereotypical thinking
• Current defense mechanisms
• Security policies single loop
• Employee training
• Security policies
• Has humans involved in creation
• Are not updated
• Are not followed

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Why does it work?

• Information is readily and easily available

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How does it work?

• First attain easily available data
• Use it to fake authority
• Attain more confidential information
• Feedback loop - result of each action is fed back
  to get a better result in the next action
• Final deadly attack on obtaining enough
  information
• Devise attacks to minimize reaction and weaken
  security

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Types of Social Engineering

• Pretexting
• Creating a scenario that does not exist in an
  attempt to pressure a victim in leaking
  information
• Generate cues to build the victims trust

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Types of Social Engineering

• Phishing
• The attacker typically sends an email that
  appears to come from a legitimate source like a
  bank or credit card company, asking to verify
  some information and warns of dire consequences
  if action is not taken

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Types of Social Engineering

• IVR or phone phishing
• The attacker created a very legitimate sounding
  copy of an organizations IVR(Interactive voice
  response) system. The attacker will send an email
  urging people to call on the toll free number to
  verify information. On calling, they will readily
  give their information

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Types of Social Engineering

• Trojan horse
• They take advantage of the greed and curiosity
  of people to propagate malware. They come as
  email attachments with attractive subject lines
  which, when opened introduce a virus in the system

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Types of Social Engineering
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Types of Social Engineering
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Types of Social Engineering
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Types of Social Engineering

• Baiting
• These are like physical Trojan horses. The
  attacker leaves malware infected physical media
  like CD ROM with legitimate but curious labels
  around the workplace which when inserted by any
  attacker will cause the system to be infected.

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Types of Social Engineering

• Online Social Engineering
• Users repeat a single password for all their
  accounts
• attacker sends an email to sign up for some
  interesting site or some important update asking
  for a username and a password

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Types of Social Engineering

• Reverse social engineering
• Make people come to you instead of you
• Attacker sabotages a network, causing a problem
• Advertise that he is the appropriate person to
  fix the problem
• When he comes to fix the network problem, he
  requests of information from the employees

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Combat strategies

• Physical protection
• Security policies that separate documents into
  different levels or compartments, separation of
  duty, double loop
• Employee training
• Lie detectors

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Bibliography

• Goodchild, J. (2008, Nov). Social Engineering 8
  Common Tactics. Retrieved Nov 2008, from
  NetworkWorld http//www.networkworld.com/news/200
  8/110608-social-engineering-eight-common.html
• Granger, S. (2001, Dec). Social Engineering
  Fundamentals, Part I Hacker Tactics. Retrieved
  Nov 2008, from SecurityFocus http//www.securityf
  ocus.com/infocus/1527
• Granger, S. (2002, Jan). Social Engineering
  Fundamentals, Part II Combat Strategies.
  Retrieved Nov 2008, from SecurityFocus
  http//www.securityfocus.com/infocus/1533
• Jose J. Gonzalez, J. M. (2006). A Framework for
  Conceptualizing Social Engineering. CRITIS 2006,
  LNCS 4347 , 79-90.
• Wikipedia. (n.d.). Social engineering (security).
  Retrieved Nov 2008, from Wikipedia
  http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_engineering_(s
  ecurity)

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Bibliography

• VP contender Sarah Palin hacked
  http//wikileaks.org/wiki/VP_co
  ntender_Sarah_Palin_hacked
• Three Blind Phreaks
  http//www.wired.com/wired/
  archive/12.02/phreaks_pr.html
• U.S. vs. Mitnick and DePayne http//www.cnn.com/SP
  ECIALS/1999/mitnick.background/indictment/page01.h
  tml
• New Trojan Bait CNN Videos
  http//blog.trendmicro.com/new-trojan-bait-cnn-vid
  eos/

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Questions?