Security eBooks

This eBook explains attacker motivations, Identify Social Engineering techniques, Identify sound security measures to protect critical assets, summarize key areas of control your organization should have in place to improve the security posture, motivators include knowledge, curiosity, ego, social acceptance and pure entertainment, gaining access to a physical access facility by means of coercion or manipulation or simple entry.

As the cliché goes, information is power. In this age of technology, an increasing majority of the world's information is stored electronically. It makes sense then that we rely on high-tech electronic protection systems to guard that information. As professional hackers, Johnny Long and Kevin Mitnick get paid to uncover weaknesses in those systems and exploit them. Whether breaking into buildings or slipping past industrial-grade firewalls, their goal has always been the same.

Defending against today’s social engineering attacks is difficult but not impossible, security experts say. It requires focusing on the human element of the equation with better security awareness training that gets employees to think twice about clicking on certain emails. Let’s look at some of the social engineering ploys used against enterprises today, what’s helping to fuel them, and strategies that can help a company fend off these attacks and protect its valuable data.

Social engineering is a broad term for a wide range of tactics and techniques used by criminal attackers that exploit the human element. While cyber attacks combine a range of different tactics, it is clear that there is one very common risk denominator – us humans.  “While the threats against us may “seem” innumerable, infinitely varied, and ever-changing, the reality is they aren’t. The common denominator across the top four patterns of security incidents – accounting for nearly 90% of incidents – is people. Whether it’s goofing up, getting infected, behaving badly or losing stuff.”

Social engineering exploits vulnerabilities at different layers (i.e. technical, social layer) in an organizational defense structure. It is therefore important to understand how to defend against these attacks using a holistic defense approach including multiple countermeasures. The literature suggests a plethora of countermeasures, little research has however been done to assess their effectiveness in managing social engineering threats.

This thesis is the end result of the graduation project with the title ‘Managing social engineering risk’ and subtitle ‘Making social engineering transparent’. This research project focuses on social engineering in organizations and addresses the following questions; what is social engineering and who is this social engineer, what are the threats to organizations, how can these threats be identified and which countermeasures can be taken to mitigate the risk of social engineering?

Despite heavy investment in security infrastructure cyber crime is still growing both in  quantity and quality. With the enormous growth in adoption of Internet enabled applications  and devices the focus for cyber criminals is increasingly shifting from exploiting software  vulnerabilities to exploiting vulnerabilities in human behavior through the use of social  engineering methodologies. However, there only has been intermittent and as a result in  exhaustive academic scrutiny on it till date.

The aim of this eBook is to present the evolution of modern social engineering and to discuss its relationship with modern cybercrime and cyberterrorism trends. The best way to open such document is to report a classic definition of Social Engineering (SE onward in the document), to better underline the difference between what is commonly perceived as SE and what is the current state of this “art”. There are many different definitions of SE, but the following is interesting because it is classic and belongs to the so-called old-school SE.

Unmasking the Social Engineer: The Human Element of Security focuses on combining the science of understanding non-verbal communications with the knowledge of how social engineers, scam artists and con men use these skills to build feelings of trust and rapport in their targets. The author helps readers understand how to identify and detect social engineers and scammers by analyzing their non-verbal behavior.

Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking reveals the craftier side of the hacker’s repertoire—why hack into something when you could just ask for access? Undetectable by firewalls and antivirus software, social engineering relies on human fault to gain access to sensitive spaces; in this eBook, renowned expert Christopher Hadnagy explains the most commonly-used techniques that fool even the most robust security personnel, and shows you how these techniques have been used in the past.

This eBook is a practical, hands-on guide to learning and performing SET attacks with multiple examples.Kali Linux Social Engineering is for penetration testers who want to use BackTrack in order to test for social engineering vulnerabilities or for those who wish to master the art of social engineering attacks. This eBook is introductory in nature and will definitely help those who aspire to learn about Social Engineering tactics that can be deployed using Kali Linux. It contains snapshots of such attacks in action, which will be of aid to new learners.

Social engineering attacks target the weakest link in an organization's security human beings. Everyone knows these attacks are effective, and everyone knows they are on the rise. Now, Social Engineering Penetration Testing gives you the practical methodology and everything you need to plan and execute a social engineering penetration test and assessment. You will gain fascinating insights into how social engineering techniques including email phishing, telephone pretexting, and physical vectors can be used to elicit information or manipulate individuals into performing actions that may aid in an attack.

The rapid growth of strong technological control measures used to protect information technologies has forced attackers into exploiting creative ways to fulfill their purpose. The creative attacks are centered on the not so technological aspects of information technology, which are “humans”, often called the weakest link. Network users are being targeted to provide essential information, which would ease a technical attack. In the information security field, social engineering is defined as: “an attack in which an attacker uses human interaction to obtain or compromise information about an organization or its computer system.”

As technology matures, new threats rise and take the place of the “traditional” issues (insecure infrastructure, insecurely developed software, etc.), threats that revolve around exploiting human vulnerabilities instead of technical vulnerabilities. One of the most famous threats that have risen in the area of Information Security is Social Engineering.The goal of this study is to take an interpretive approach on Social Engineering, by using Cialdini’s principles of influence.

The world's most infamous hacker offers an insider's view of the low-tech threats to high-tech security Kevin Mitnick's exploits as a cyber-desperado and fugitive form one of the most exhaustive FBI manhunts in history and have spawned dozens of articles, books, films, and documentaries. Since his release from federal prison, in 1998, Mitnick has turned his life around and established himself as one of the most sought-after computer security experts worldwide. Now, in The Art of Deception, the world's most notorious hacker gives new meaning to the old adage, "It takes a thief to catch a thief."