I see dumb people
I really got a kick out of the Editor’s Letter in the front of the 7/17 issue of InfoWorld. It’s about using social engineering instead of hacking to break into computer systems. Apparently it’s far easier to con your way in than break your way in. The founder of a computer security company is profiled and he talks about a recent security audit for a client. Check this out…
As part of a security audit for a credit union, one member of his team wrote a Trojan that would collect passwords and other data and e-mail them back to SNT. The team installed the Trojan on 20 USB thumb drives and scattered them around the credit union parking lot early one morning. Soon enough, folks picked them up, plugged them in, and the passwords came rolling in. It was a trivial matter to trawl the client’s network and get other confidential data.
Is that just crazy or what? I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised. Curiosity kills more than cats.
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2 Responses to “I see dumb people”
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People are so dumb! I can’t believe that would work. If they were candy bars would everybody eat them? I’d like to think this was done as an experiment with no adverse results. Dream on.
That’s pretty funny. Kevin Mitnick has two books out that detail ways to do Social Engineering/Hacking. I never finished ‘The Art of Deception’, but from what I did read it was pretty interesting.
Info on both books can be found here: http://www.kevinmitnick.com/products.php