“In 1994, Anthony Zboralski, a French hacker called the FBI office in Washington pretending to be an FBI representative working at the US embassy in Paris. Zboralski was able to persuade the person on the phone to tell him how to connect to the FBI’s phone conferencing system. In seven months, he ran up a phone bill to $250,000.” (Allen, 2006) How vulnerable are you? If you were a victim of a social engineering attack would you even know? There are countless stories of companies falling victim to sophisticated social engineering attacks by some of the best cybercriminals. The war against companies and cyberspace marches on. It is important for organizations to understand what social engineering is, the various types of social engineering attacks, the reason for …show more content…
According to Heary (n.d.), social engineering is define as any act that influences a person to take an action that may or may not be in their best interest. But social engineering is much more than that. Social engineering focuses on the psychological, physiological and technological aspects on influencing people. There are several types of social engineering attacks and they continue to evolve daily. Examples of these types of attacks are: Familiarity Exploit: a malicious actor tries to make it appear normal to everyone that they should be there. They make themselves familiar with those that they want to exploit. Unknowingly, that person lowers their guard, and eventually falls prey to the attacker. People react differently to people that they know or that they have been around. An example would be a social engineer tailgating into a secure area behind someone that they have become familiar with (“The Official Social Engineering Portal,”
Steve Lohr, the author of How Privacy Vanishes online explains how people give out much of their personal information online, allowing the information to be used by anyone. The information, birthdays, family photos, personal gossip, and movie or book preferences, are able to be used for a recreation of a person's identification. Lohr, brings out examples of how this can and has happened by explaining the study done by Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Carter Jernigan and Behram Mistree analyzed more than 4,000 Facebook Profiles of students who said they were gay and were able to predict with a 78% accuracy on whether a profile belonged to a gay male."
Zinberg’s theory (1984) proposes that “social controls apply to the use of all drugs”. He describes these social controls as sanctions and rituals that regulate where, why and how drugs are taken. They are devised with the intention of minimising both harm and addiction. Sanctions define whether and how a particular drug should be used. They may be informal and shared by a group, as in the common maxim’s associated with alcohol use, “If you drink and drive, you’re a bloody idiot” for example, or they may be formal, as in various laws and policies aimed at regulating drug use and minimising harm. Rituals are stylized, prescribed patterns of behaviour surrounding the use of drugs. They have to do with procuring the drug, administration of the drug, selecting the physical and social settings for use, activities undertaken
The data breach at Target may have been less brute force than a casual observer might imagine, given the language used on Target’s own FAQ which describes the incident as “criminals forc[ing] their way into our system.”1 While this description might conjure an image of hackers sitting in a dimly lit room, running complex software on super powered machines, and attempting a brute force or DDoS style attack to gain access to customer information databases, the reality appears to have been slightly less glamorous. There can be a variety of unintended entries to a secure system, and criminals will go for the weakest link in the chain. This weak link may oftentimes be not a security hole in the software, but instead the users of that software. The term hacking is used as a catch-all for situations where an information system has been compromised, even though the actual attack or breach of security was nothing more than information leaking out from users or corporations not thoroughly versed in good security practices. In these cases, the breaches are more appropriately described as being a result of social engineering. Social engineering is the technique of combining technological and psychological savvy to obtain illegal access to information2. This can involve anything from complaining and pleading with a phone support representative to give out information, to just realizing that many people use the same password for most of their accounts. Phishing is a social engineering tactic where an attractive, familiar, or official looking email is sent out to multiple recipients with the intent of tricking them into clicking a malicious link or downloading malware attachments3,4. While the latter approach may feel more like hacking, because ...
Social Engineering: What It Is and How to Help Protect Yourself. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.microsoft.com/security/resources/socialengineering-whatis.aspx
Most attackers engaged in some behavior prior to the incident that caused others concern or indicated a need for help.
According to the text , Social Psychology, “social psychology is the scientific study of how people think about, influence, and relate to one another”(pg. 4) this is viewed in a variety of social topics incorporating group behaviors, attitudes, conformity, obedience to authority, stereotypes and peer pressure. Outside factors can have a positive or negative affect our view of ourselves and each other. These outside factors are used to persuade and influence group behavior. Persuasion is defined as “the process by which a message induces change in beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors” (Myers, 2010, pg. 230). The principles of this process of persuasion according to researchers, Robert Cialdini and Thomas Davidson, are attractiveness and likeability, reciprocity, social proof, consistency, authority, and scarcity (Davidson, 2008)(Myers, 2010, pg. 237). These principles of persuasion impact our self-perception, our attitudes and behaviors, and our culture.
The ability to conduct warfare through technological methods has increased information security awareness and the need to protect an entities infrastructure. Subsequently, cyber warfare produces increased risk to security practitioners that employ technology and other methods to mitigate risks to information and the various systems that hold or transmit data. A significant risk to information lies in the conduct of electronic commerce, hereinafter called e-commerce. E-commerce is the purchasing or selling of goods and/or services through the internet or other electronic means (Liu, Chen, Huang, & Yang, 2013). In this article, the researcher will discuss cyber warfare risks, present an evaluation on established security measures, identify potential victims of identity theft, and present an examina...
Every day millions in some cases billions of dollars are made by businesses from income brought in by online sale of products and services. As businesses continually develop and expand their client base with online products and services so does the desire by criminals to exploit vulnerabilities in their e-commerce setup. The mass worldwide internet usage growth within the last 20 years has been “an approximate 16 million users in 1995 to an estimated 2,937 million in March of 2014” As the importance of e-commerce increases so does the need to protect the technological infrastructure that will carry out online transactions for each business regardless of its size. I will attempt to highlight and review the history of a few cyber crimes to show the progression of the crimes within the last 30-40 years. I also plan to review how the economy and consumers are impacted by cyber crimes. Finally I will make an effort to contribute with information gathering on how to lower the risk of a cyber attack from and individual user to a large scale business.
Outcome Engineering Manipulation is used in nearly every endeavor encountered throughout an average day. Things ranging from day to day commercials all the way to political campaigns are using concealed techniques of manipulation influencing the everyday actions of the public. Leaving any person with access to the world, vulnerable to manipulation. The Webster dictionary defines manipulation as, “to control or play upon by artful, unfair, or insidious means, especially to one’s own advantage”. Meaning that anyone can become skilled in the art of manipulation, even children.
Every day, citizens are constantly losing money and being victimized due to these fraudulent activities. Cyber crime, including fraud, identity theft, stalking, and hacking, is a growing problem that can be prevented by taking the proper precautions. The biggest cases of cyber crimes are cases of fraud. Online fraud comes in many forms. It ranges from viruses that attack computers with the goal of retrieving personal information, to email schemes that lure victims into wiring money to fraudulent sources” (What is “online fraud”).
Social philosophy concentrates on social behavior and social issues. As Scott Hughes mentions in “Social Philosophy,” individualism, social interaction, motives for behavior, society as a whole, and many other social sciences make up the entity of social philosophy. Social philosophy also correlates to other philosophical domains such as epistemology, metaphysics, morality, and political philosophy. The analysis of human behavior concentrates on elements that influence social philosophy such as the study of cognitive skills, psychology, and sociology. Social philosophy can relate to motives of one's decision making or how certain situations can make one react a certain way; it directly relates to a person's everyday life. In addition, social philosophy addresses various ways that people are grouped together – fashion, fads, cults, and crowds (Hughes). On a higher level, social philosophy can relate to the ethics between people and institutions (Frederick Rauscher). These institutions can include businesses, markets, and private associations. The social situation or environment in these places accommodates personal interests and the well-being of various workers or citizens. For instance, a board of director may choose to keep racial diversion equal so that there is no accusation of unfair employments among employees.
Cybercrime refers to all forms of crime conducted through a computer or a mobile device using computer networks. It is thus the use of a computer with the aim of intercepting and manipulating content, disrupting communication, stealing or generally destroying others’ information or hardware through a network. Although cybercrime is a worldwide problem and affects both small and big companies, small companies are affected more from the dangers of cybercrime. The rapid advancement in technology is causing tremendous problems to businesses in terms of more sophisticated cyber-attacks. This project is interesting and beneficial because it enlightens one on the dangers of cybercrime, thus preparing individuals to know how to prevent attacks while online, how to reduce the effects of a cyber-attack and how to prevent future
Social control implies the deliberate attempt to change a person’s behavior so that, it conforms to the norms of society. There are two types of social control, indirect social control and direct social control. Indirect social control is the internalization of group norms though socialization. We conform to these norms because we want to. We do not want to disappoint our families, friends or significant other. Also threat of punishment is enough to get someone to conform to societal
As the internet has evolved it is now a part of many people’s daily lives and with that, many could not function or conduct their daily business or lives without it. It is impressive that we can now communicate and even see someone all the way across the country with just a few clicks of a mouse. But as technology changes and progresses seemingly for the good, many will always find ways to exploit technology and use it with the intent of committing crime, turning a positive tool into a negative one. As such the negative side of the World Wide Web, cybercrime has evolved as just one of the major disadvantages of the internet. Cybercrime itself is a broad term and can and does include any crime that is committed via the internet or computer network including seemingly minor acts as downloading music, to denial of service attacks, to even acts of cyber-terrorism. With the newly formed threat of cybercrime has also come new ways for law enforcement to attack and prevent it as well but with limited resources not much can be changed but to continue to prevent new methods from approaching the cybercrime world. This is not only just in our own neighborhoods but is at an international scale. This paper generates the insight about the overall rise of cybercrime among our societies. The main focus of this paper is to describe the types of computer crimes and its effects on individuals and businesses.
Millions of people around the world use computers and the internet every day. We all use it in school, work even at home, computers have made us life easier, it has brought so many benefits to the society but it has also brought some problems and cybercrimes is one of them. “The times have really changed,” said Greg Garcia, the department’s assistant secretary for cyber security and communications. “We’re seeing now phishing, farming, botnets … war dialing and domain server spoofing. And we’re seeing coordinated cyber-attacks against nation states.” (Fowler 5) Cybercrime is one of the most prevalent and most popular rising crimes being committed today. This is criminal activity done using computers and the Internet. There are millions victims around the world everyday who face these problems. Most people become victims of these at one time or another, but there are ways to avoid or deal with cybercrime by protecting yourself appropriately. I also was one of those victims who faced a similar problem. This unfortunate truth forces me to understand that computers and the Internet have made our lives easier in many ways. However, it is unfortunate that people also use these technologies to take advantage of others through identity theft, hacking attempts, and malicious use of software.