social engineering

Two years ago, Dave Kennedy, a penetration tester, social engineering expert and contributor to the website social-engineer.com, wanted to create a tool for pen testers to simulate social engineering attacks.

Social engineering attacks security at its weakest link: People. Preying on employees' best intentions, social engineers gain unauthorized access to systems and information.

Jim Stickley got his first computer at age 12, and he was chatting with other computer "nerds" on bulletin board sites by the time he was 16. A wannabe hacker, Stickley said his first foray into playing the system was with free codes -- codes that would exclude his phone and computer time from racking up charges that would incur the wrath of his parents.

Which tactic works best for a scamming social engineer? Acting like an authority figure and requiring a victim to answer questions and give up sensitive information? Or acting like a nice, trustworthy person who strikes up a friendly conversation and just needs the victim to tell them a few things to help them out?

The latest social engineering trick to get victims to open malicious email attachments accuses them of being spammers and threatens to sue them if they don't stop.

A group of security researchers based in Egypt have created a tool that will make social engineering easier because it automates the collection of hidden Facebook profile data that is otherwise only accessible to friends in a user's network.

Chris Hadnagy gets paid to fool people, and he's gotten pretty good at it over the years. A co-founder of social-engineering.org and author of Social Engineering: The Art of Human Hacking, Hadnagy has been using manipulation tactics for more than a decade to show clients how criminals get inside information.

There were some disturbing results from a capture-the-flag-style contest held at this summer's DefCon security conference. The CTF exercise--called "How Strong Is Your Schmooze?"--was an attempt to raise awareness about social engineering, or human manipulation in order to commit a crime. It challenged contestants to attempt to breach (in an ethical and legal way) information about target companies that could be used for a hypothetical attack.

A new report from NSS Labs studies how various Web browsers perform when it comes to blocking socially-engineered attacks. The startling results show that Internet Explorer isn't just better than rival browsers like Chrome and Firefox--but leaves competitors completely in the dust.

With Black Friday quickly approaching, and retailers racing to outdo each other with earlier and earlier deals, it is safe to say that the holiday shopping season has begun. If you're shopping online, though, and paying with PayPal--be warned. There is a phishing attack targeted just for you.