social engineering attacks – Over the past few years, there has been advancement in the cyber world and social media websites and applications.
and with the technology improving every day, hackers have found ways to penetrate social media systems and they use different types of methods for this. In today’s world, there is nothing more important than protecting your information and safety in social media.
everyone thinks that stealing information and loss of security needs complicated and advanced tools. but hacking can also happen without any tools. in social engineering, hackers can access information without any applications or tools.
Social engineering is the art of manipulating people for stealing their data or forcing them to do something by gaining their trust. social engineering isn’t that easy though cause the attacker needs social and communication skills for gaining people’s trust.
Hackers use social engineering cause it makes it much easier for them to hack a system.
they can also use social engineering attacks to hack social media platforms for example many hackers use this method to hack telegram or any other social media applications that we use daily.
Here’s how social engineering happens.
1.Foot-printing
hacker collects information for achieving his goals like people’s name lists and activities or even geographical location.
2.Gaining trust
the hacker finds the right method for starting communication with the victim for establishing and gaining his trust.
3.Psychological manipulation
in this part, the hacker tries to collect data and information by fooling the victim.
4.Last part
the hacker deletes his traces after accessing the information he needs and achieving his goal and completely disappears.
Different methods are used in social engineering
1.communicating with the user
this is the easiest way of social engineering attacks. after finding the person who has the information that the hacker wants, the hacker starts an intimate and close friendship with that person and assembles the essential information.
2.communicating with the user by phone or email
This is the most common way of social engineering. In this method, the hacker calls the victim and impersonates a familiar person. the hacker can even impersonate a security manager and ask the victim for the username and password and access the necessary information.
3.Dumpster Diving
In this method, the hacker searches the waste of organizations to get information. the hacker searches the waste to find papers with the necessary information like organizational charts and this way hackers can get the data they need by searching the organization’s waste.
4.Trojan Horses
In this method, the hacker persuades the victim to download a program that has a trojan, and the victim logs in and enters his information. For doing this, the hacker should know the victim and know about his hobbies and interest to achieve his target.
5.phishing
In this way, the hacker sends the victim an email and asks him to enter his password or change it and when the victim enters his password, the hacker can easily access it. hackers can also use unrealistic websites for getting essential information.
6.Surfing online content
The hacker collects the information he wants through the organization’s websites and forums and surfing online content.
7.Shoulder surfing
Shoulder surfing means seeing directly when the victim is entering his password. In this way, the hacker stands next to the victim and sees the password, and uses it when necessary. This can also happen in banks.
8.Reverse social engineering
This method is completely the opposite of social engineering. In this way, the hacker causes problems to the organization’s server. when the victim realizes this problem, the hacker persuades him that he can solve this problem and by entering the organization he gets all the information that is needed and gets to his target.
How to protect yourself against social engineering
No method can completely stop social engineering but you can do things to increase your security and prevent social engineering.
here is how you can do this
1.Educating the personnel about cybersecurity and increasing internet safety.
2.Using security applications for increasing security like Anti-Virus and Anti-Spams.
3.Using safety equipment like firewalls on the devices that are used, to deal with social engineering methods and expanding your security
4.Gaining physical safety
5.Prevention from unauthorized access
6.Protecting the organization’s information on its websites and preventing the misuse of the information by hackers.
7.Using virtual keyboards for entering username and password
by using this methods you can increase you’re social media security and prevent hack you’re Instagram .
