Social Engineering Part 1

Spies, criminals, and other people using social engineering for their personal gain are able to manipulate their target while building a false trust. People that tend to be naive or generally trusting are prime targets for those using social engineering. When the individual isn’t sure who to target, they often play the percentages by attempting to manipulate random people until they find someone who is susceptible to their gimmicks. This is often what the normal population witnesses from social engineering scams. Brute force attacks on the general public typically yield low percentages of success, but with some types of sensitive information, it only takes a few gullible people to get what the criminal wants.

There are many educational resources available to learn about scams and other social engineering attacks. The internet and other public media offer tremendous resources for people to learn about tricks of the social engineering trade and how to keep personal and sensitive information secure. Many corporations also have trainings to help their employees understand the risk of losing information. Some of the trainings focus on social engineering. The lessons learned in those training opportunities should be applied to life outside of work so that each family can maintain personal and identity security.

Happy New Year to all! We will continue to explore social engineering in subsequent weeks here at The O including methods, targets, and “theft from a distance” philosophy.