Social engineering (or human hacking) is a confidence trick, designed to gather information that will allow a hacker to access a computer system in order to commit a fraud or install malicious software. It is an easier way to get information such as access to a computer than actually hacking the system.
There are many ways in which you can be conned into revealing confidential information. All of these techniques are Benin Email List based on ‘bugs in the human hardware’, ie cognitive biases in human decision-making or, in other words, our tendency to accept a person or scenario at face value.
Social engineering techniques
There are literally thousands of ways a hacker can socially engineer a computer user… the only limit is the hacker’s imagination! Here are a few of the most prevalent of these techniques:
Email from a friend
If a malicious person manages to get someone’s email password, whether by social engineering or hacking, they have access to that person’s entire contact list. This enables the miscreant to send emails to everyone on that list.
In this scenario, you receive an email from a friend that contains a link or an attachment that you can download. If the email contains a link, you’ll trust the link because it comes from a friend.
So you click on the link and you are infected with malware that enables the perpetrator to collect all your contacts and con them into opening a similar link. At the same time, the malware will play havoc with your machine by installing viruses, worms, key-loggers, a back door etc.
You will also trust an email that comes from a friend if it contains an attachment but, once you download it, malicious software will be embedded with much the same result as clicking on a link.
The advice is obvious… do not click links or open attachments in an email unless you are expecting to receive them. Read the message carefully. If it does not seem the sort of message your friend would write, BBBORG as regards language or content, you can be sure it has been sent by a hacker.
