How to become an ACTUAL Social Engineer.

How to become an ACTUAL Social Engineer.

 
 

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 To understand it we must first ask, what is social engineering?
 

Simply put according to Social Engineer.org

 

Quote:How is social engineering defined? We define social engineering this way. “Any act that influences a person to take an action that may or may not be in their best interest”.  Our primary focus in this framework is malicious social engineering. However, both positive and malicious aspects of social engineering implement the same principles. With this in mind, it is also important to understand the psychological, physiological, and technological aspects of influence in general.

 

Now we know it is the ability to influence, or manipulate others. It is a mindset, and lifestyle.
 

There are six principals of influence.

 

Quote:Source: Wikipedia.org - Social Engineering.
 

Six key principles

Authority

In social engineering, the attacker may pose as authority to increase the likelihood of adherence from the victim.
 

Intimidation

Main article: Intimidation

Attacker (potentially disguised) informs or implies that there will be negative consequences if certain actions are not performed. Consequences could include subtle intimidation phrases such as "I'll tell your manager" to much worse.
 

Consensus/Social proof

Main article: Social proof

People will do things that they see other people are doing. For example, in one experiment, one or more confederates would look up into the sky; bystanders would then look up into the sky to see what they were missing. At one point this experiment was aborted, as so many people were looking up that they stopped traffic. See conformity, and the Asch conformity experiments.
 

Scarcity

Main article: Scarcity (social psychology)

Perceived scarcity will generate demand. The common advertising phrase "while supplies last" capitalizes on a sense of scarcity.
 

Urgency

Linked to scarcity, attackers use urgency as a time-based psychological principle of social engineering. For example, saying offers are available for a "limited time only" encourages sales through a sense of urgency.
 

Familiarity / Liking

Main article: Friendship

People are easily persuaded by other people whom they like. Cialdini cites the marketing of Tupperware in what might now be called viral marketing. People were more likely to buy if they liked the person selling it to them. Some of the many biases favoring more attractive people are discussed. See physical attractiveness stereotype.

 

The different type of attack vectors.

 

Quote:Vishing

Vishing, otherwise known as "voice phishing", is the criminal practice of using social engineering over a telephone system to gain access to private personal and financial information from the public for the purpose of financial reward.[9] It is also employed by attackers for reconnaissance purposes to gather more detailed intelligence on a target organization.
 

Phishing

Main article: Phishing

Phishing is a technique of fraudulently obtaining private information. Typically, the phisher sends an e-mail that appears to come from a legitimate business—a bank, or credit card company—requesting "verification" of information and warning of some dire consequence if it is not provided. The e-mail usually contains a link to a fraudulent web page that seems legitimate—with company logos and content—and has a form requesting everything from a home address to an ATM card's PIN or a credit card number. For example, in 2003, there was a phishing scam in which users received emails supposedly from eBay claiming that the user's account was about to be suspended unless a link provided was clicked to update a credit card (information that the genuine eBay already had).[10] By mimicking a legitimate organization's HTML code and logos, it is relatively simple to make a fake Website look authentic. The scam tricked some people into thinking that eBay was requiring them to update their account information by clicking on the link provided. By indiscriminately spamming extremely large groups of people, the "phisher" counted on gaining sensitive financial information from the small percentage (yet large number) of recipients who already have eBay accounts and also fall prey to the scam.
 

Smishing

The act of using SMS text messaging to lure victims into a specific course of action. Like phishing it can be clicking on a malicious link or divulging information. Examples are text messages that claim to be from a common carrier (like FedEx) stating a package is in transit, with a link provided.
 

Impersonation

Pretending or pretexting to be another person with the goal of gaining access physically to a system or building. Impersonation is used in the "SIM swap scam" fraud.
 

Pretexting

Main article: Pretexting

Pretexting (adj. pretextual) is the act of creating and using an invented scenario (the pretext) to engage a targeted victim in a manner that increases the chance the victim will divulge information or perform actions that would be unlikely in ordinary circumstances.[11] An elaborate lie, it most often involves some prior research or setup and the use of this information for impersonation (e.g., date of birth, Social Security number, last bill amount) to establish legitimacy in the mind of the target.[12] As a background, pretexting can be interpreted as the first evolution of social engineering, and continued to develop as social engineering incorporated current-day technologies. Current and past examples of pretexting demonstrate this development.
 

This technique can be used to fool a business into disclosing customer information as well as by private investigators to obtain telephone records, utility records, banking records and other information directly from company service representatives.[13] The information can then be used to establish even greater legitimacy under tougher questioning with a manager, e.g., to make account changes, get specific balances, etc.
 

Pretexting can also be used to impersonate co-workers, police, bank, tax authorities, clergy, insurance investigators—or any other individual who could have perceived authority or right-to-know in the mind of the targeted victim. The pretexter must simply prepare answers to questions that might be asked by the victim. In some cases, all that is needed is a voice that sounds authoritative, an earnest tone, and an ability to think on one's feet to create a pretextual scenario.
 

Vishing

Main article: Voice phishing

Phone phishing (or "vishing") uses a rogue interactive voice response (IVR) system to recreate a legitimate-sounding copy of a bank or other institution's IVR system. The victim is prompted (typically via a phishing e-mail) to call in to the "bank" via a (ideally toll free) number provided in order to "verify" information. A typical "vishing" system will reject log-ins continually, ensuring the victim enters PINs or passwords multiple times, often disclosing several different passwords. More advanced systems transfer the victim to the attacker/defrauder, who poses as a customer service agent or security expert for further questioning of the victim.
 

Spear phishing

Main article: Spear phishing

Although similar to "phishing", spear phishing is a technique that fraudulently obtains private information by sending highly customized emails to few end users. It is the main difference between phishing attacks because phishing campaigns focus on sending out high volumes of generalized emails with the expectation that only a few people will respond. On the other hand, spear-phishing emails require the attacker to perform additional research on their targets in order to "trick" end users into performing requested activities. The success rate of spear-phishing attacks is considerably higher than phishing attacks with people opening roughly 3% of phishing emails when compared to roughly 70% of potential attempts. When users actually open the emails phishing emails have a relatively modest 5% success rate to have the link or attachment clicked when compared to a spear-phishing attack's 50% success rate.[14]
 

Spear-phishing success is heavily dependent on the amount and quality of OSINT (open-source intelligence) that the attacker can obtain. Social media account activity is one example of a source of OSINT.
 

Water holing

Main article: Watering hole attack

Water holing is a targeted social engineering strategy that capitalizes on the trust users have in websites they regularly visit. The victim feels safe to do things they would not do in a different situation. A wary person might, for example, purposefully avoid clicking a link in an unsolicited email, but the same person would not hesitate to follow a link on a website they often visit. So, the attacker prepares a trap for the unwary prey at a favored watering hole. This strategy has been successfully used to gain access to some (supposedly) very secure systems.[15]
 

The attacker may set out by identifying a group or individuals to target. The preparation involves gathering information about websites the targets often visit from the secure system. The information gathering confirms that the targets visit the websites and that the system allows such visits. The attacker then tests these websites for vulnerabilities to inject code that may infect a visitor's system with malware. The injected code trap and malware may be tailored to the specific target group and the specific systems they use. In time, one or more members of the target group will get infected and the attacker can gain access to the secure system.
 

Baiting

Baiting is like the real-world Trojan horse that uses physical media and relies on the curiosity or greed of the victim.[16] In this attack, attackers leave malware-infected floppy disks, CD-ROMs, or USB flash drives in locations people will find them (bathrooms, elevators, sidewalks, parking lots, etc.), give them legitimate and curiosity-piquing labels, and wait for victims.
 

For example, an attacker may create a disk featuring a corporate logo, available from the target's website, and label it "Executive Salary Summary Q2 2012". The attacker then leaves the disk on the floor of an elevator or somewhere in the lobby of the target company. An unknowing employee may find it and insert the disk into a computer to satisfy their curiosity, or a good Samaritan may find it and return it to the company. In any case, just inserting the disk into a computer installs malware, giving attackers access to the victim's PC and, perhaps, the target company's internal computer network.
 

Unless computer controls block infections, insertion compromises PCs "auto-running" media. Hostile devices can also be used.[17] For instance, a "lucky winner" is sent a free digital audio player compromising any computer it is plugged to. A "road apple" (the colloquial term for horse manure, suggesting the device's undesirable nature) is any removable media with malicious software left in opportunistic or conspicuous places. It may be a CD, DVD, or USB flash drive, among other media. Curious people take it and plug it into a computer, infecting the host and any attached networks. Again, hackers may give them enticing labels, such as "Employee Salaries" or "Confidential".[18]
 

One study done in 2016 had researchers drop 297 USB drives around the campus of the University of Illinois. The drives contained files on them that linked to webpages owned by the researchers. The researchers were able to see how many of the drives had files on them opened, but not how many were inserted into a computer without having a file opened. Of the 297 drives that were dropped, 290 (98%) of them were picked up and 135 (45%) of them "called home".[19]
 

Quid pro quo

Quid pro quo means something for something:
 

An attacker calls random numbers at a company, claiming to be calling back from technical support. Eventually this person will hit someone with a legitimate problem, grateful that someone is calling back to help them. The attacker will "help" solve the problem and, in the process, have the user type commands that give the attacker access or launch malware.

In a 2003 information security survey, 91% of office workers gave researchers what they claimed was their password in answer to a survey question in exchange for a cheap pen.[20] Similar surveys in later years obtained similar results using chocolates and other cheap lures, although they made no attempt to validate the passwords.[21]

Tailgating

Main article: Piggybacking (security)

An attacker, seeking entry to a restricted area secured by unattended, electronic access control, e.g. by RFID card, simply walks in behind a person who has legitimate access. Following common courtesy, the legitimate person will usually hold the door open for the attacker or the attackers themselves may ask the employee to hold it open for them. The legitimate person may fail to ask for identification for any of several reasons, or may accept an assertion that the attacker has forgotten or lost the appropriate identity token. The attacker may also fake the action of presenting an identity token.
 

Other types

Common confidence tricksters or fraudsters also could be considered "social engineers" in the wider sense, in that they deliberately deceive and manipulate people, exploiting human weaknesses to obtain personal benefit. They may, for example, use social engineering techniques as part of an IT fraud.
 

As of the early 2000s, another type of social engineering technique includes spoofing or hacking IDs of people having popular e-mail IDs such as Yahoo!, Gmail, or Hotmail. Additionally, some spoofing attempts included emails from major online service providers, like PayPal.[22] This led to the "proposed standard" of Sender Policy Framework RFC 7208 dated April 2014, in combination with DMARC, as means to combat spoofing. Among the many motivations for this deception are:
 

Phishing credit-card account numbers and their passwords.

Cracking private e-mails and chat histories, and manipulating them by using common editing techniques before using them to extort money and creating distrust among individuals.

Cracking websites of companies or organizations and destroying their reputation.

Computer virus hoaxes

Convincing users to run malicious code within the web browser via self-XSS attack to allow access to their web account

Another type is to read sensitive information of unshielded or unprotected Displays and input devices, called Shoulder surfing.

 
 

There are four stages to a social engineering attack.
 

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I'll attach some links to resources outlined in social engineering the art of human hacking.
 

Information Gathering

Information Gathering Outlined - Useful with OSINT
 

Elicitation - The most important skill that will make or break you as a Social Enigineer.
 

Elicitation - Social-Engineer.org
 

Psychological Principals - Social Engineer.org
 
 

And three DEFCON Panels I employ anyone watch to understand just how powerful this shit really is, and get you into the right mindset.
 

DEFCON 19: Steal Everything, Kill Everyone, Cause Total Financial Ruin!
 
 

DEF CON 23 - Chris Rock - I Will Kill You



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DEF CON 24 - Chris Rock - How to Overthrow a Government



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If you actually followed along congrats on graduating.
 

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