Social engineering, unlike many methods of attacking people, tends to be target-specific. A social engineer wisely chooses who to target in order to create the perfect social engineering attack and has several contingencies if some of the steps in the attack fail. The choice of who to attack is hardly ever a lucky guess; the attack begins with a lot of information gathering to find the target. Due to the nature of this type of an attack, it would be foolish of an attacker to rely on a lucky guess. It may turn out that the target picked has nothing to offer and thus all the efforts and resources used in the whole attack go to waste. A social engineering attack has to be tailored just to the specific target or else it will not work. A successful attack on a certain target will also not necessarily work on another due to the level of specificity that has to be...
-
Book Overview & Buying
-
Table Of Contents
Learn Social Engineering
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)
Preface
Free Chapter
Introduction to Social Engineering
The Psychology of Social Engineering – Mind Tricks Used
Influence and Persuasion
Information Gathering
Targeting and Recon
Elicitation
Pretexting
Social Engineering Tools
Prevention and Mitigation
Case Studies of Social Engineering
Ask the Experts – Part 1
Ask the Experts – Part 2
Ask the Experts – Part 3
Ask the Experts – Part 4
Other Books You May Enjoy
