nii social engineering case study
DESCRIPTION
Case-study of a Social Engineering exercise conducted by the Network Intelligence India Pvt. Ltd. (http://www.niiconsulting.com/) team.TRANSCRIPT
Exploiting the human weaknesswww.niiconsulting.com
Presentation by: Wasim ‘washal’ HalaniNetwork Intelligence India Pvt. Ltd.
Network Intelligence, incorporated in 2001, is a committed and well-recognized provider of services,
solutions and products in the IT Governance, Risk Management, and Compliance space. Our
professionals have made a mark for themselves with highly satisfied clients all across the globe supported by our offices in India and the Middle East. As an ISO 27001-certified company ourselves, we are strongly positioned to understand your needs and deliver the
right answers to your security and compliance requirements. We have won accolades at numerous national and international forums and conferences. Our work truly speaks for itself and our clients are
the strongest testimony to the quality of our services!
Information security at every organization is one of the most important aspects!
It is people who handle this information
Social Engineering is exploiting the weakness link – the employees
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“Social Engineering is the act of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information, rather than by breaking in or using technical hacking techniques; essentially a fancier, more technical way of lying.”
[Source: Wikipedia]
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Wordpress vulnerability on the blogs of their websites
Kevin ‘don’t call me a security expert’ Mitnick
Dan ‘I smile when I am hacked’ Kaminsky
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Phishing Baiting Identity Theft Dumpster Diving Email Scams Use of Authority Request for Help Indulging Curiosity Exploiting Greed=Abuse of Trust
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IT/ITES Company Two offices About 400 – 500 employees We had previously conducted other security
projects for them Guards were familiar with us We also knew a few people from our previous
projects
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Only 3 people in the organization aware of the exercise
Obtain ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card! Bought a spy pen-cam Create fake authorization letters◦ Fake letterhead (thank-you Photoshop)◦ Fake signatures◦ Fake content
Understand the organization’s process flow Obtain employee list Define ‘targets’
Security Auditor◦ Surprise audit on behalf of Government Agency◦ Chinese attacks on Indian institution (same-day
newspaper headlines ) College Student◦ Research project
Customer◦ Call-center
Phishing Social Networking
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Visit the office Convince the guard to let me in for the
surprise security audit◦ “It won’t be a surprise if you tell anyone”
Once again we interviewed people◦ Some suspicious◦ Reading is not verifying
Dumpster diving
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Gain unauthorized access Stay back late, after almost all employees left◦ Photograph the office
‘Steal’ sensitive documents◦ From open drawers
Check personal folders kept on desks
Sensitive information on technologies used Network architecture revealed Lot of technical information revealed to
“college student” doing a project, as well as journalist
Found bundle of official letter heads in store-room
Gained access to the Server Rooms
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We registered a domain with a single letter difference◦ Registered email accounts
Prepared a ‘Employee Complaint/Feedback Form’◦ Company header, styling etc.
Sent out mails to on behalf of HR person Employees are asked to enter their
‘credentials’ to log in to the system The final page has a PDF that is to be
downloaded as a ‘unique token number’
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About 10 users entered their credentials which we captured
No one downloaded the PDF Took about 10-15 mins. for HR dept. to be
alerted◦ They sent out an email denying the fake email
One employee had a discussion with HR and responded back to our email address
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Linkedin◦ Fake employee profile Searched for people not listed in the network◦ Joined the company ‘network’◦ Sent out invites
Facebook◦ Multiple fake profiles Added each other as friends
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Turns out they had a new employee Everyone thought his was the ‘fake’ profile Very difficult to identify the real profile ‘Attractive’ profiles receive friend requests
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Confidential…
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Contact: [email protected] http://www.niiconsulting.com @washalsec
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