Social Engineering

Hacking is something that people are familiar with in this day and age. However, Social Social engineering is becoming more and more common in today’s world, but not many people know what it is. It can be thought of as a part of hacking. Cj Cornel, a BYU student working in Cybersecurity, defined social engineering as, “the manipulation of people to gain valuable information.”

That information may be passwords. Cornel is a part of a team of ethical hackers, also known as red team. They can be hired for penetration testing–legal hacking. When she was trying to find some passwords to get into a system, she used social engineering.

Social Engineering, however, doesn’t have to involve a lot of technology. Dr Dale Rowe, a professor of Cybersecurity, said that it requires “very little.” Much of social engineering is lying.

Social engineering often uses a tool that many high schoolers are familiar with–social media. Lots of information is put out on things like Facebook.

Rowe described a time the red team at BYU needed to get some passwords. They found out that many of their targets were interested in Harry Potter through Facebook. This information allowed the team to put together an email promoting a fake giveaway for tickets to Harry Potter World. When they entered the giveaway, they had to type in their usernames and passwords on a fake login site which gave the red team all they needed to know.

While these people are using social engineering to help companies and people, others are using social engineering to hurt people. Cornel and Rowe gave some advice to avoid being socially engineered. Check websites. Go directly to websites instead of using links. Don’t post when a house will be empty. Don’t put out personal information like phone numbers. See if emails are recognizable and don’t download things or click links from unfamiliar emails.
Social engineering has always been used to get information, but people are not always aware of it. In this technology centered world, it needs to be known about

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc7scxvKQOo

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Alisa Dabb

Alisa is maker of half-baked story ideas and well baked cupcakes. She likes to spend her time in the kitchen, in the library, in the mountains, or in her head.