http://www.csoonline.com/article/691910/new-social-engineering-poll-reveals-which-scam-works-better
By Joan Goodchild
Senior Editor
CSO
October 17, 2011
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?
That was the question asked by the team behind the web site
social-engineer.org. They have just released results of a several-months
long poll that laid out two different scenarios of how a social engineer
might try and elicit information from a victim.
The first showed how the principle of endearment and how it may be used
by a malicious social engineer. The example given was a social engineer
who attempts to get strangers to engage in very personal conversation
with him with little effort. Dressed very casually he grabbed a prop
that he felt would endear people to him, a small sign that had a funny
slogan on it. As he walked around, looking like a tourist with his prop,
he was able to engage people in conversation.
"The fact is we like to deal with people who are like us, but even more
powerfully we like to deal with those who LIKE us," said Christopher
Hadnagy, founder of social-engineer.org and author of Social
engineering: The art of human hacking. "Endearment makes a person feel
liked and, in turn, like you. Endearment is used by getting on the same
plane as the target, or giving them reasons to like you."
[...]
_____________________________________________________
Subscribe to InfoSec News - www.infosecnews.org
http://www.infosecnews.org/mailman/listinfo/isn
