Social Engineering. What is it, How did it start, and What you can do about it?

Kanye West, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and more had their Twitter accounts compromised.

As reported by Business Insider, there were over 130 accounts that were hacked. According to Twitter, it was a “coordinated social engineering attack” by people who “successfully targeted some of our employees with access to internal systems and tools.”

So, what exactly is social engineering? It is a technique that hackers use that involves human-to-human interaction to get the user to disclose sensitive information, affecting their computers with malware, or opening links to infected sites. These are typically sent to victims via email or SMS.

How did this start? In the first half of the last century there were chain letters. A person would receive a letter in the mail with a message. This message was to be reproduced by the recipient and sent to 10 or more new recipients. Many of these letters were designed to spread hoaxes intending to defraud recipients of money. One example was the "Prosperity Club" or "Send-a-Dime" letter.

The Denver Post first warned readers of this chain letter scheme and its impact on postal facilities on March 19, 1935. Just over a month later the Denver post office handled an estimated 165,000 of these chain letters. The volume was so great that the Denver post office ended up incurring over $20,000 in overtime payroll expenses. That’s $383,543.28 in today’s money.

Now these chain letters are spread via email, which at first blush seem harmless. The 2020 pandemic has reaccelerated this trend of emailing recipes, poems, or “news” to friends and colleagues. The message may or may not be harmless, but these chain emails are full of verified names, email addresses, and phone numbers which can be used for social engineering attacks.

In order to protect you and your business against social engineering attacks, Oraman IT Solutions has developed a formal process to deal with such scenarios. This includes conducting regular drills on users, training them to deal with such situations, and establishing proper methods to identify legitimate personnel.

Here at Oraman, we make a huge effort to keep our --and our clients’-- data secure. Our team of experts are dedicated to delivering a reliable and high-quality service that small to medium-sized businesses can rely on.

We are ready to help you develop strategies for not only surviving but thriving, in the future. Give us a call today to set up your first consultation.