Social Engineering

 

Social engineering is an attack vector that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves manipulating people into breaking normal security procedures and best practices to gain unauthorized access to systems, networks or physical locations or for financial gain.

Threat actors use social engineering techniques to conceal their true identities and motives, presenting themselves as trusted individuals or information sources. The objective is to influence, manipulate or trick users into releasing sensitive information or access within an organization. Many social engineering exploits rely on people's willingness to be helpful or fear of punishment. For example, the attacker might pretend to be a co-worker who has some kind of urgent problem that requires access to additional network resources.

Social engineering is a popular tactic among attackers because it is often easier to exploit people than it is to find a network or software vulnerability. Hackers will often use social engineering tactics as a first step in a larger campaign to infiltrate a system or network and steal sensitive data or disperse malware.

How does social engineering work?

Social engineers use a variety of tactics to perform attacks.

The first step in most social engineering attacks is for the attacker to perform research and reconnaissance on the target. If the target is an enterprise, for instance, the hacker may gather intelligence on the organizational structure, internal operations, common lingo used within the industry and possible business partners, among other information.

One common tactic of social engineers is to focus on the behaviours and patterns of employees who have low-level but initial access, such as a security guard or receptionist; attackers can scan social media profiles for personal information and study their behaviour online and in person.

From there, the social engineer can design an attack based on the information collected and exploit the weakness uncovered during the reconnaissance phase.

If the attack is successful, the attacker gains access to confidential information, such as Social Security numbers and credit card or bank account information; makes money off the targets; or gains access to protected systems or networks.

Types of social engineering attacks

Popular types of social engineering attacks include the following techniques:

• Baiting. An attacker leaves a malware-infected physical device, such as a Universal Serial Bus flash drive, in a place it is sure to be found. The target then picks up the device and inserts it into their computer, unintentionally installing the malware.
• Phishing. When a malicious party sends a fraudulent email disguised as a legitimate email, often purporting to be from a trusted source. The message is meant to trick the recipient into sharing financial or personal information or clicking on a link that installs malware.
• Spear phishing. This is like phishing, but the attack is tailored for a specific individual or organization.
• Vishing. Also known as voice phishing, vishing involves the use of social engineering over the phone to gather financial or personal information from the target.
• Whaling. A specific type of phishing attack, a whaling attack targets high-profile employees, such as the chief financial officer or chief executive officer, to trick the targeted employee into disclosing sensitive information.
• Pretexting. One party lies to another to gain access to privileged data. For example, a pretexting scam could involve an attacker who pretends to need financial or personal data to confirm the identity of the recipient.
• Scareware. This involves tricking the victim into thinking their computer is infected with malware or has inadvertently downloaded illegal content. The attacker then offers the victim a solution that will fix the bogus problem; in reality, the victim is simply tricked into downloading and installing the attacker's malware.
• Watering hole. The attacker attempts to compromise a specific group of people by infecting websites they are known to visit and trust with the goal of gaining network access.
• Diversion theft. In this type of attack, social engineers trick a delivery or courier company into going to the wrong pickup or drop-off location, thus intercepting the transaction.
• Quid pro quo. This is an attack in which the social engineer pretends to provide something in exchange for the target's information or assistance. For instance, a hacker calls a selection of random numbers within an organization and pretends to be a technical support specialist responding to a ticket. Eventually, the hacker will find someone with a legitimate tech issue whom they will then pretend to help. Through this interaction, the hacker can have the target type in the commands to launch malware or can collect password information.
• Honey trap. In this attack, the social engineer pretends to be an attractive person to interact with a person online, fake an online relationship and gather sensitive information through that relationship.
• Tailgating. Sometimes called piggybacking, tailgating is when a hacker walks into a secured building by following someone with an authorized access card. This attack presumes the person with legitimate access to the building is courteous enough to hold the door open for the person behind them, assuming they are allowed to be there.
• Rogue security software. This is a type of malware that tricks targets into paying for the fake removal of malware.
• Dumpster diving. This is a social engineering attack whereby a person searches a company's trash to find information, such as passwords or access codes written on sticky notes or scraps of paper, that could be used to infiltrate the organization's network.
• Pharming. With this type of online fraud, a cybercriminal installs malicious code on a computer or server that automatically directs the user to a fake website, where the user may be tricked into providing personal information.

Preventing social engineering

There are a number of strategies companies can take to prevent social engineering attacks, including the following:

• Make sure information technology departments are regularly carrying out penetration testing that uses social engineering techniques. This will help administrators learn which types of users pose the most risk for specific types of attacks, while also identifying which employees require additional training.
• Start a security awareness training program, which can go a long way toward preventing social engineering attacks. If users know what social engineering attacks look like, they will be less likely to become victims.
• Implement secure email and web gateways to scan emails for malicious links and filter them out, thus reducing the likelihood that a staff member will click on one.
• Keep antimalware and antivirus software up to date to help prevent malware in phishing emails from installing itself.
• Stay up to date with software and firmware patches on endpoints.
• Keep track of staff members who handle sensitive information, and enable advanced authentication measures for them.
• Implement 2FA to access key accounts, e.g., a confirmation code via text message or voice recognition.
• Ensure employees don't reuse the same passwords for personal and work accounts. If a hacker perpetrating a social engineering attack gets the password for an employee's social media account, the hacker could also gain access to the employee's work accounts.
• Implement spam filters to determine which emails are likely to be spam. A spam filter might have a blacklist of suspicious Internet Protocol addresses or sender IDs, or they might detect suspicious files or links, as well as analyze the content of emails to determine which may be fake.