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Counteracting Social Engineering

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Counteracting Social Engineering
John Archibeque
BSA 310
Aug. 6, 2012

Social Engineering is the art of tricking people into doing something or giving out secure information by manipulating them with conversation. A person who is skilled in this sort of manipulation can trick people to give up information that normally would be kept secure. If a person is not prepared, they will realize, too late, that they compromised the secure information. There are a few different techniques of social engineering. One form is “Pretexting.” This technique is used to fool a business to give up a customer’s information by supplying a little information to make the victim think you really have the authority to access all their information or account. The pretexter simply prepares answers to questions that might normally be asked by the victim. Another technique is “Phishing.” With this technique, the phisher send an e-mail that looks legitimate to victims asking them to update information for an account they have such as EBay, where they might have credit card information stored. They ask the victim to type in their new credit card information in and some do. A third means of attack is “Baiting.” The attacker might leave an infected disk laying around a business hoping that someone picks it up and installs it in their PC which would then infect it and give them access to their information. These forms of theft or attack happen every day all over the world. It is up to us to make employees and co-workers aware of the threat and give them the tools to recognize any attempt of fraudulent activity.

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