Tips on the Prevention of Social Engineering?

SecGuy asks: "I'm constantly bombarded with news about gee-whiz security technology aimed at protecting the "front door" of an organization. Yet social engineering -- and, more broadly, human failures of various kinds -- lead to a large percentage of successful hacks. I'm curious about what systematic approaches (if any) have been successful at building up an organizational immunity towards social engineering attacks and generally reducing the types of human failure that lead to security compromises. A lot of approaches I've seen boil down to hectoring and punishing, which (a) doesn't seem to work well, and (b) generally pisses people off."

Comments

Re:Social Engineering - strategies to stop it

["Zow"]

"Out of Office" auto responses are not allowed to propagate outside of the business if allowed at all. They are specifically flagged at creation and blocked at the company?s outbound servers.

Yes, yes,yes!

Whenever I post to Bugtraq I get back a ton of autoresponses, usually something to the effect of, "I'm on vacation, so if you need help with one of the servers call Ralph at 1234567." I responded to all of these once in bulk noting that:

1. I know you're systems primary administrator isn't around
2. I know the name and number of someone else that probably isn't a full time sysadmin, but has all the power of one (easily manipulated)
3. I have a great story to tell that person: "I talked to Bill before he took off and he said if I kept having this access problem when he was gone I should call you."
4. They were sending these autoreplies to anyone who posted to Bugtraq, which certainly contains some of the seediest people in Computer Security
5. Be glad I, at least, am one of the good guys.

The ones that responded to my message were generally pleased to hear from me: many noted that all the other responses they got from their autoresponses were downright rude if not just plain obscene (hence they were happy to give my advice more creedance). A couple also noted that they hated using autorepliers, but their management required it: one said he'd use my letter as evidence as to why the policy should be changed.

So I have to agree 100% with maggard's recommendation here. Actually, they're all good, although some may need slight modifications depending on your environment. For example, we're not concerned about powered network drops (for our unclassified net at least) to unused offices in my building because I work in a secured government facility protected by guards, gates & guns. YMMV.

-"Zow"

Re:Social Engineering - strategies to stop it

["Zow"]

i've found that guards are no match for the evil power of 'looking like you belong there'.

They are where I work. We don't have rent-a-guards, we have bonified State Police. We actually have multiple levels of security officers, ranging from the unarmed gate guards (I think the theory is to minimize the number of weapons, the same way that Bobbies in England don't carry firearms) to our protective security officers that tote GLOCs and M-16s - most of those are former military. And the arms aren't just for show either: every now and then (always after hours) they do both live-fire and blank-fire exercises.

Our guards are required to touch the badge of every person coming in. I guess a while back they had a red team test the effectiveness of this system: the team was able to get in by flashing a credit card that the guard just blindly touched. Heads rolled big time over that. Now days they look at the pictures on the badges carefully: I really piss them off when I ride my bike in with my helmet and Oakleys: they actually take a minute (usually squinting) to see that my facial features match.

I will admit that once inside, people normally get pretty lax: particularly about the badges being worn face out on the upper half of the body. But I saw a guy once who had lost his badge in the cafeteria and security kept him under armed escort like he was a prisoner as he went back to get it. Furthermore, a lot of the laxness comes from seeing the same people every day. If you go into an unfamiliar area usually someone will ask you, "Can I help you?" It's a lot more polite than a formal challenge, but the undertone is there.

One way to look at it is that a lot of our security measures were adopted from the military. If you want to impliment good physical security, looking at how the military does it is a good place to start. I'm not saying they're perfect: there's always the proverbial corporal who gets busted down to private for falling asleep at his post. I think they've actually gotten better in recent years though as our armed forces has become almost purely volunteers typically of a fairly high calibur. My dad did some special ops during his tour back during the cold war and he loves to tell the story of how they were doing war games, so he snuck into the "enemy" camp right past the guards and under the Colonel's tent, then woke the Colonel up and said, "Excuse me sir, you're now a prisoner of war." You better believe some heads rolled over that one the next morning.

Which actually brings me to another recommendation: red team. Use people who know how to do social engineering to do a site evaluation of your resistance. Depending on where you work, the size of your company, budget, etc, this could be done by an outside contractor, internal team acting as outsiders (which may in turn pose as insiders, but they aren't allowed to pose as their real persona), or even just get a bunch of your friends to do it (but management has to agree to it regardless: you wouldn't want to get your friends in trouble - this is really only a good idea if you work at a small, hip company anyway).

-"Zow"

Re:OK I'm a Luser

[mrzaph0d]

wealthy enough to retire to an island, but too cheap to make an overseas call on his own dime?

Re:Social engineering isn't a problem.

[stevey]

I had a great time, a year or so ago, doing something similar - but in a more lo-tech way..

I normally get a bus to work, and I've noticed that other bus drivers sometimes get onto the bus, speak to the driver for a while, then get free rides - probably a perk of the job

So, one sunny Sunday afternoon I dressed up in a fair copy of a bus-drivers outfit - and just randomly got onto buses..

As long as I said "hi" to the driver, and acted like I knew him/her I usually got away with it - sometimes I'd get strange looks, (hey, its not often somebody with a septum piercing drives busses ;), but nobody ever challenged me..

Steve
---

Re:Social Engineering - strategies to stop it

[mrzaph0d]

i've found that guards are no match for the evil power of 'looking like you belong there'.

i was a contractor at a major telephone company and i was asked one time to help move a bunch of laptops (brand new, still in their boxes) from one building to another. i had permission, but the bad part was that only after i'd taken about $24,000 worth of laptops out of the building was i asked where i was going. this was after about 20 trips (80 laptops, 80 monitors, 80 docking stations).

sure, i had to have a badge to do get in and out of the doors, but there was always someone coming in or out who was willing to hold the door for me. would you make someone carrying a bunch of stuff stop to fumble with their card key when you know you could just stand there a few second longer and hold it open for them?

when i left there i noticed that if i took my parking card from my new job and clipped it to my belt with the back facing out, i was never challenged as to whether or not i was supposed to be there. (the employees all had to wear badges, and regulations were supposed to be that the badges had to have the picture facing out.) which brings up another point, if you are supposed to wear a badge at a place, why doesn't anyone ever challenge you? because they're embarressed to try since you may be legit. i mean this place used to issue temp badges (stickers that were supposed to be worn at all times), but no one ever wore them because they were a nuisance.

and security guards are no help unless they actually do something other than sit at their kiosk and read the paper/watch the video monitors..

OK I'm a Luser

[Deanasc]

I'm embarassed to say that once I refused a collect call from the Dominican Republic that turned out to be a client. The thing is just that morning the office manager sent around a memo warning us of suspicious telephone activity from the Carribean. I thought "Ah Ha! Here's some of that suspicous telephone calls they warned me about." And boy was the client pissed off. If it hadn't been for the fact that I was a recent transfer to the department and nobody informed me there was a client in the DR I'd've been fired.

The point is when you operate a business sometimes it's better to write off a couple thousand dollars of fraud then tick off someone wealthy enough to retire to a Carribean Island.

Now that I get this off my chest it occurs to me that if the guy was rich enough to retire to an island he could've afforded a quick phone call to clear things up.

Social Engineering - strategies to stop it

[maggard]

Social Engineering is effective because it starts with the folks most often overlooked - the front line.

Clear company policies need to be set up regarding what information is divulged & how. This is of interest not only to IS but to HR (keeping away poachers) and to individuals (stalkers, toner salesmen.)

Some basic strategies I've used are:

• The switchboard never gives out direct lines numbers. If someone needs a direct number the person can give it himself or herself.
• All staff is requested not to give out information regarding other employees. All such calls or emails are to be referred to HR. There calls are then screened, phone numbers are taken and callbacks used. Generally only a message is taken and passed along.
• Generic accounts are set up for key positions on voicemail & email. Callers requesting the name or contact information for unspecified folks (job titles) are referred to these generic accounts where an AA can sift through them later.
• Functional addresses & numbers are used where possible. Not only do these maintain privacy & security they also facilitate job turnover/movement (outsiders don't play chase only to discover the person has either left the company or moved to a different position, is no longer who they want.)
• "Out of Office" auto responses are not allowed to propagate outside of the business if allowed at all. They are specifically flagged at creation and blocked at the company's outbound servers.
• Identifying information is stripped from client-applications. This includes web-browsers not giving out names or other non-relevant information.
• The corporate phone & email directories are not allowed to be visible outside of the company. Furthermore their printing or copying is discouraged, made difficult.
• Laptops are heavily secured as they can provide invaluable information on a company's internals. This means using encrypted file systems, etc.
• Support & security folks have access to up-to-the-moment company directories that indicate a employee & contractor's names and where they fit in the org chart. Outside calls requesting possibly sensitive information from folks not known personally to the support person are conference-called to someone knowing them to verify their identity. If in doubt a callback is arranged and some method of determining their identity is found even if it means their describing what's in their top left desk drawer.
• Security is encouraged to be vigilant and backed up! Refusing access, even to a VIP or someone with a good story is respected and the employee commended if the refusal was warranted (doubt is in their favor.)
• Paper-shredders are made availaible and easy-to-use. In cases of bulk-shreddings special bins (recycling bins sprayed an ugly color) can be used & the shredding will be done by someone else.
• Outside trash containers are not hidden behind the building but in a secured and/or visible location. If necc. some sort of beautification can be undertaken but putting them where activity will be noted is important, more important then hiding them.
• Outside access to company resources is heavily controlled. Some possible common-sense measures include not making VPN's full peers on the network but filtering them from sensitive areas, no use of direct-inbound-dialing-to-computers (PC-Anywhere etc.) Furthermore 'unreasonable' hours should be implemented; there's rarely a pressing need to work remotely at 4am even if one employee might want to do so once a month, it's not worth the hazards.
• "Public" & unused parts of all facilities should not have live network drops without a specific need & their being kept in visible places. Network drops in unused parts of facilities are deactivated from the closet. Large-areas that are unused are completely deactivated. This means no drops behind the couch in the lobby and no working drops in the empty offices/floors.
• Settings given to outsiders within the company (folks using conference rooms etc.) should be filtered to give only limited access. The handy how-to-get-on-our-network sheets posted on the walls of these rooms *only* give information to 'guest' settings.
• "Honeypot"-like devices should be placed within the company firewall & monitored. SNMP, network scans or the like traffic should be flagged and correlated with a specific employee with a need / right to do such.

In my experience many companies leak like sieves. Web pages are full of names & numbers, especially MS Office-created ones replete with embedded names, titles, server-addresses & other identifying information nuggets. Helpful folks are often all too willing to give out names & contact information, especially on weekends and off-hours. Help desks can be snowed by a "remote contractor" or "new employee, not in the directory yet" brandishing their supposed boss's name and demanding information so they can "get their job done".

The best strategy? Cleaning up the leaks. Providing avenues of communication that are non-specific about their destination. Supporting folks when they refuse to give out information to unverifiable folks, defending them to those denied or their supervisors.

Finally it's not just a matter of keeping the crackers at bay; it's also stalker ex-dates, aggressive sales-weasels & other unwelcome harassers. While protecting the company folks are also protecting themselves.