Social Engineering
One may have the urge to ask, what is social engineering? To put it simple, social engineering is the form of hacking people’s computers or stealing valuable information by deceit.
Social engineering comes in many forms and sizes; from calling a target and pretending to be calling from a genuine source, sending message / emails offering attractions to make targets visit a certain website, making targets install / trust certificates meant to steal / highjack systems, to offering free vulnerable antivirus / spyware / malware / adware which will be used in stealing information and or conceal traffic and or highjack a system.
Through social engineering, an attacker has the capability to lead you to a fake website which looks like the genuine website a target is trying to access and thereby getting your credentials once you attempt login. These forms of attack can be averted by always verifying the address you are trying to access, making sure that not a single character is added to the genuine address you are attempting to access.
Also, sometimes you may receive free credit card offers from an individual, lottery winning, bank transfer, visa offer, and etc, by taking your time to verify the address of origin, it may look like; xxxxxxx@yahoo.com or xxxxxx@outlook.com and etc, ask yourself, why will Guarantee Trust Bank not instead use xxxxxx@gtbankplc.com? Best thing, disregard these emails, do not send your personal information them, as they are using spamming also to see which addresses are alive, once you respond, they can share it with others to attack you another time using another format.
Another famous form of social engineering is by calls. A person may call you and tell you that he is calling from your bank and that your account is having a certain problem or they are upgrading your account type, and needs your account user name and password, do not fall for it, your bank will NEVER call you to ask for your account credentials because they have it all in their system.
Finally, you may be familiar with adware’s popping on your screen telling you that your system is vulnerable and you need to scan it, this is especially applicable to those who visit download sites, when you click on that link, it installs software which is there to change your settings / steal your information or track your computer use.
Be aware of social engineering, it’s a growing form of remote hacking and it is to deceive you into believing that you are secured, don’t accept what you have any doubt about, and more importantly, ask those who know about it before proceeding with it.
Don’t forward hoax emails or change your settings according to forwarded messages to you, if for instance WhatsApp wants a certain adjustment on its software, it will be on the tech news on major news sites.
Author: Bakary Jadama
Certified Ethical Hacker v8
Certified Course in Network Security
Cisco Certified Networking Associate Security
Cisco Certified Networking Associate
Ousman Faal [Digital Vigilante] is a Tech Entrepreneur & Digital Skills Trainer who teaches both in the classroom and online. He has experience in various technologies and likes sharing it with others. Ousman has published 149 articles on this blog. He is the CEO of Faalen Technologies and Skills.gm.
