Cyber Security Discussion 2
Perform a search on the Web for articles and stories about social engineering attacks or reverse social engineering attacks. Find an attack that was successful and describe how it could have been prevented.
Directions:
- Students are required to post one original response to the discussion questions each week, as well as a response to one classmate. Original responses should not be a word for word rehashing of what is stated in the readings, but rather an integration of the concepts and additional insights, either from real world experience or additional sources. It should be a 250 word response to the question each week by 11 p.m. on Wednesday evening. Your primary posting may end with a tag-line or a related question of your own. Between 1 a.m. on Thursday and 11 p.m. on Saturday, you should have done your secondary posting. Your secondary posting is a response to one classmate’s post. Each answer/response should be supported with research. Responses to classmates should not be “I agree” or “I like the way you stated that.” These responses should again be insightful, offering an opinion or facts based on your research and experiences. The response to one classmate should be a minimum of 125 words. See APA criteria for citing resources. You must provide a minimum of a reference, in APA format, in your original response.
Social engineering attacks
Social engineering attacks involve manipulating or tricking victims to disclose sensitive data in order for the attacker to access and disrupt the network. Not having proper cybersecurity measures could lead to a lot of chaos.
One of the popular social engineering attacks was the Yahoo Security breach which had happened twice in the company’s history. One of them had occurred in 2013 when a lot of confidential information of about 3 billion users had been compromised. It included details such as the names, email addresses of the associated with them, phone numbers, passwords, date of births, etc. It had allowed hackers to get access to any accounts without the use of a password. The information was later put on the dark web which could have been used to carry out more scams.
In order to prevent such malicious attacks from occurring, a few measures can be taken such as-
Personal information shouldn’t be posted online on any social media platform or over-sharing of such information needs to be avoided. Unknown Email links or attachments shouldn’t be opened and security measures need to be implemented in the company in order to protect data and interests of its employees. A good data protection training program needs to be given to make the employees aware of the implications of disclosing such sensitive and confidential data. In order to prevent such cyber-crimes from happening, people need to all the more stay alert and take precautions to keep themselves safe.
References
DOBRAN, B. (2018, September 27). Retrieved from https://phoenixnap.com/blog/famous-social-engineering-attacks
DOBRAN, B. (2019, February 26). Retrieved from https://phoenixnap.com/blog/what-is-spear-phishing-definition-prevention
team, S. t. (2019, August 20). Retrieved from https://securitytrails.com/blog/social-engineering-attacks