Security Center

The term 'information security' means protecting information and information systems from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification, or destruction in order to provide integrity, confidentiality, and availability.

Courtesy of NIST

• Social engineering is the attempt to manipulate or trick a person into providing confidential information to an individual that is not authorized to receive such information.

• Pretexting
  • An invented scenario is used to engage a potential victim to try and increase the chance that the victim will bite.  It's a false motive usually involving some real knowledge of the victim (e.g. date of birth, Social Security number, etc.) in an attempt to get even more information.
• Phishing
  • The process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details by masquerading as a trustworthy entity using bulk email which tries to evade spam filters. Emails claiming to be from popular social websites, banks, auction sites, or IT administrators are commonly used to lure the unsuspecting public. It’s a form of criminally fraudulent social engineering.
• Spear Phishing
  
  • A small, focused, targeted attack via email on a particular person or organization with the goal to penetrate their defenses. The spear phishing attack is done after research on the target and has a specific personalized component designed to make the target do something against their own interest. Here is more about how they do it.
• Water-Holing
  • This technique takes advantage of websites people regularly visit and trust. The attacker will gather information about a targeted group of individuals to find out what those websites are, then test those websites for vulnerabilities. Over time, one or more members of the targeted group will get infected and the attacker can gain access to the secure system.
• Quid Pro Quo
  • Latin for 'something for something', in this case it's a benefit to the victim in exchange for information. A good example is hackers pretending to be IT support. They will call everyone they can find at a company to say they have a quick fix and "you just need to disable your AV". Anyone that falls for it gets malware like ransomware installed on their machine.
• Honeytrap
  • A trick that makes men interact with a fictitious attractive female online. From old spy tactics where a real female was used.
• Diversion Theft
  • A 'con' exercised by professional thieves, usually targeted at a transport or courier company. The objective is to trick the company into making the delivery somewhere other than the intended location.
• Baiting
  • Baiting means dangling something in front of a victim so that they take action. It can be through a peer-to-peer or social networking site in the form of an explicit movie download or it can be a USB drive labeled “Q1 Layoff Plan” left out in a public place for the victim to find. Once the device is used or malicious file is downloaded, the victim’s computer is infected allowing the criminal to take over the network.
• Tailgating
  • A method used by social engineers to gain access to a building or other protected area. A tailgater waits for an authorized user to open and pass through a secure entry and then follows right behind.
• Scareware
  • Also deception software, rogue scanner software, or fraud ware, scareware, is a form of computer malware that deceives or misleads users into paying for the fake or simulated removal of malware. Scareware, in recent years, has become a growing and serious security threat in desktop computing.