During Tuesday’s lecture on ethics, privacy, and security, Dr. Pursel outlined different security threats that we all face in today’s technologically-powered world.  One particularly interesting method that others use to steal important information is social engineering.  Social engineering, at its base, is an attack technique that utilizes social and psychological manipulation to influence victims to divulge confidential information or to allow the attacker into a restricted area.  Usually this is done face-to-face in an attempt to get into a building, but today it is being used more over the internet or phone to gain important personal or financial information.  An example of this would be the recent rise in fraudulent phone calls where the attacker employs the pretext of being an IRS agent to trick people into giving up their data.

    In a recent VICE article, a woman by the name of Sophie Daniel described her experiences as a physical penetration tester.  In a nutshell, she is hired by businesses to attempt to break into their buildings and detail how they could improve their security as a company.  In general, she states that “very rarely do I go through an entire assessment without some sort of social engineering” (Daniel).  Some of the social manipulation strategies that she uses include performing basic social media research to make connections with her victims, as well as playing different fake roles like secretaries over the phone and interior designers in person to trick people into letting their guard down around her so that she could steal private data.  Through this and the mistakes of her victims (such as not verifying her identity), she is usually successful with her break-ins.  Overall, she claims that “there are ways to protect yourself and your company from attacks like this. I think it starts by sharing stories like these, and educating and empowering each other to be vigilant” (Daniel).

Since privacy as we know it is being killed off more and more by the day, it is integral now more than ever to pay attention to what information we are sharing, particularly online, and who we are sharing it with.  Awareness of social engineering and stories like Sophie’s are crucial to protecting ourselves and our businesses.

Daniel, Sophie. “How I Socially Engineer Myself Into High Security Facilities.” Motherboard, VICE, 20 Oct. 2017, motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/qv34zb/how-i-socially-engineer-myself-into-high-security-facilities.

Image: https://wraysec.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Social-engineering-security.png