Social Engineering

[Writer's Name]

[Institution Name]

Social Engineering

Introduction

The paper discusses the concept of social engineering with respect to ethical issues relating to the use of information technology. We will discuss in the following content a brief overview of social engineering, human and computer based social engineering, as well as methods of prevention.

Social Engineering

The term "social engineering" refers to the art of manipulating people to bypass security systems. This technique involves obtaining information from users via telephone, email, mail or direct contact.

The attackers use social engineering persuasive force and take advantage of the innocence of the user posing as a co-worker, a technician or administrator, etc. In general, social engineering methods are organized as follows:

A phased approach to gain the trust of the user, posing as a member of the management of the company or circle or a customer, supplier, etc.

An alert phase to destabilize the user and observe the speed of their response. For example, this could be a pretext of security or an emergency situation;

A distraction, i.e., a phrase or situation which reassures the user and keeps focus on the alert. This could be an acknowledgment indicating that everything is back to normal, a phrase or, in case either through email or a web page, the redirect to the website of the company.

Social engineering can be done through a variety of means; by phone, by email, by mail, instant messaging, and other means of the same kind. Social engineering is the use of influence and persuasion to get people to disseminate useful information. This is one of the most difficult attacks to defend and to detect because there is no software or hardware that can defend you from this type of attack.

Human Based Social Engineering

This type of attack is based on manipulating confidential information through interaction of people. This attack exploits the ...