WHAT IS SOCAIL ENGINEERING ATTACK?

Social engineering is the act of hacking into the mind of humans. The most vulnerable thing for any hacker is getting into the mind of a person associated with a certain organization.

SOCIAL ENGINEERING

 “Social Engineering or Mobile Phishing Attack”. These attacks are mostly very useful against such organizations that are big and invest a heavy amount of their revenue in cybersecurity.

The attacker gains access to one of a user’s credentials by pretending to be a security consultant. He tells them that their account has been compromised and can they have to share their login credentials for verification. This attack for so effective due to the research that the attacker does about the history of the victim.

After getting the hold of only one customer’s ID the hackers then exploited and gathered the information of several customers.

 

HOW ARE SOCIAL ENGINEERING ATTACKS CARRIED OUT?

Social engineering attacks are carried out in the following steps,

1. The attacker gains information regarding the victim.
2. They look into the services that the victim uses (the website they want access to).
3. They then send a phishing email or call the victim in a very convincing way.
4. The emails usually state that the user’s account has been compromised and they need to provide their credentials to gain access to their account.
5. The victim provides the information (via call) or writes the credentials on the fake website created by the user and is then redirected to the original website on which he then logs in without facing any issue.
6. In this way, the attack gains the login info and then can do whatever he/she wants with it.

 

 

HOW TO STAY SAFE FROM THESE ATTACKS

As the world is becoming more and more virtual and everything is being converted to the internet, it is time that we take our security seriously and do the necessary steps needed for our data protection,

1. First of all, if we receive such calls or emails, we should quickly inform the official law enforcement agencies.
2. Gain awareness regarding these types of attacks spam, phishing, and fake calls/emails.
3. Avoid visiting or opening suspicious sites.
4. Use secure channels that have end-to-end encryption.
5. Enable 2-Factor authentication on all our accounts.

We should all take the matter of cybersecurity seriously and educate ourselves regarding the threats of it. So, that we have secure online life and avoid such attacks.