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Social Engineering in the Workplace
An anonymous reader writes "Could a total stranger walk out of your business with thousands of dollars in merchandise without your knowing? Even worse, could they manipulate you into helping them each step along the way?"
At the last company I used to work for they once showed us a video about the importance of information privacy, and how social engineering works. In this particular example, the person would have been caught right away because he was wearing a suit. No one wears a suit on our floor, unless they're having a job interview, or meeting with the executives or something.
The reality is that most medium sized companies can be vulnerable to social engineering. In most cases the weak point in any security system is going to be on the human level. When you work with people you have to have some element of trust to make things more efficient.
You might need a security badge to get by a security desk, and a key card to get onto the floor. But people sometimes loose their badges and keycards and will be let by just this once.
If you can get into the cafateria without any security stuff you can just go to lunch there for a couple weeks, get to know people's name who work in the IS departments, and maybe even come across a dropped security badge. You can then fordge your own to get to the elevators, and then wait for someone else to open the door to get by needing a keycard. (Assuming the badge you came across didn't also have the person's keycard.)
Then getting information out might be easy. And at the company I used to work for you could probably steal hadware just by putting it on a cart. We had multiple buildings so it was common for people to be carting PCs from building to building. How many security guards would recognize the difference between a PC and a server?
Unless you have security guards that require written permission for every single hardware move your hardware is not going to be 100% safe. And unless you have a zero tollerance policy on holding the door open for someone, your information is not safe. How many companies are willing to do this?
I hate Liberals and Conservatives.
If you are a Liberal or a Conservative, then HAVE A NICE DAY!
Courage.
What's the deal with calling cheating and conning people "social engineering"? Giving it a catchy name doesn't make it any more fashionable or acceptable. I guess we have the l337 underground crowd to blame for this idiotic euphemism.
Can you social engineer your way to getting some stuff from a store and get away without getting arrested? I've noticed that with most social engineering test the people leave themselves VERY exposed in terms of being caught later. I saw this with a coworker. He did a hypothetical social engineering/hacking scenario. It was all well and good excpet that I gaurentee that had he does it in reality, he'd have been thrown in jail
since there were at least 10 people that could make an easy ID.
It's one thing to BS your way in and steal some stuff, it's quite another thing to get out and not get ID'd or videotaped. This is where most crimes go wrong. It's not that the crime itself doesn't work out ok, the criminals often get what they want, it is the aftermath that goes wrong. The crime gets reported, an investigated, and they find out who did it, and that's all she wrote.
This time the phrase conveys additional information. Engineering is probably best described as the art of applying science to control failure. A typical con, ala Matchstick Men, The Grifters, etc is all about craftsmenship, using the people. Where social engineering is all about a well planned design for a well understood system, using the bureaucracy. One is personal, one is impersonal, one depends on personal charisma, one depends on blending in.
Well, I guess it comes down to how nice people are. If every person you passed asked for your identification, your papers, what you're doing here... hum... sounds like Germany back when...
But seriously, you can get to the point of having people anal and trusting no one. Everyone is suspicious of the other, and while I suppose that is a good way to reduce theft, it also makes the place not very nice to work and shop or be around.
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