Book Image

Learn Social Engineering

Book Image

Learn Social Engineering

Overview of this book

This book will provide you with a holistic understanding of social engineering. It will help you to avoid and combat social engineering attacks by giving you a detailed insight into how a social engineer operates. Learn Social Engineering starts by giving you a grounding in the different types of social engineering attacks,and the damages they cause. It then sets up the lab environment to use different toolS and then perform social engineering steps such as information gathering. The book covers topics from baiting, phishing, and spear phishing, to pretexting and scareware. By the end of the book, you will be in a position to protect yourself and your systems from social engineering threats and attacks. All in all, the book covers social engineering from A to Z , along with excerpts from many world wide known security experts.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Well-wishers

It is unthinkable that someone would want to profit out of a disaster, but unfortunately, social engineers are heartless enough to do so. In a number of incidents such as bombings and hurricanes, social engineers will set up their own charity foundations. They will advertise it to people and encourage them to send money so that it can be used to help the victims. It seems like a good cause, except that the money does not go to the victims, rather, it goes towards enriching a few social engineers.

By the time the con is discovered, and people are advised against making donations to it, the social engineers could have made millions of dollars. This was a particularly big challenge during the Haiti 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Many fake charities were established online and advertised to people. A lot of money went into the pockets of a few people rather than the intended...