Fluent Essays

I have attached the file with 2 discussions and I need to reply to each one of them in 150 words each. APA format and references. bhanu_cs_replies.docx Unformatted Attachment Preview Social Engineering Attacks by Pavan Parvathaneni - Wednesday, January 15, 2020, 12:17 PM Social Engineering Attacks are more sophisticated. Attackers take a lot of pre-plan before attacking anyone. For a Social Engineering attack, attackers study the person for some time to find a weakness and then they carry out their attack. Social Engineering attacks are of many types. 1. Phishing: This kind of attacks happens based on the weakness of the person. For example these days every one is looking for discounts, but what the users dont understand is when they click on any link whether it is a link from email or a link on website, attackers might be waiting for us to gain our access. Phishing attacks base code is coded on bash/shell scripting or Python. when we click on unknown link attacker gains unrestricted access on your machine or cell phone. With these kind of access they can steal any information and sell it to highest bides on Dark web. 2. Pretexting: This is an other kind of social engineering attacks. Any one can be defined based on their browsing history. For example like what is our favorite place, food, music, destination or our mutual likes. In mid 2019 Facebook was requested to present for senate committee to explain why they are selling Facebook user data to third party. Because of this kind of scenarios an user data might go in to an unknown third party entity hand, where they can miss use this information. Based on this bits and pieces of user information, attackers contact users and misguide them to reveal sensitive information. 3. Baiting: Baiting is more like Phishing attack. This kind of attacks are carried out by baiting users like they provide a link for free subscription of music or movies with free registration. So, when we register in this kind of sites we will share information like email ID, full name and password. Most users try to use the same password for all their access like email, banking, insurance etc. This kind of attackers dont attack financially they gather user data and sell it on black market like Dark Web. Ways to minimize Social Engineering attacks 1. We should not share our password with any one and also we must make a habit of changing our passwords often with more complexity to keep attackers at gate. 2. We must not try to access any unknown links or reply to unknown emails/senders. 3. In Organization we should have through knowledge on restriction policy. South Carolinas Department of Revenue data breach by Tanaya Bose - Wednesday, January 15, 2020, 12:24 PM The art of manipulating user’s interaction to unknowingly give away confidential and sensitive data through different medium, well known as social engineering, was in market way before social network took over the control of our lives. Sometimes it is for confidential data, other times it is just for money. Among the handful of examples, I decided to talk South Carolina Department of Revenue data breach for this discussion. In late August and early September of 2012, South Carolina Department of Revenue’s server was breached and by mid-September millions of Social Security numbers and thousands of credit and debit card numbers belonging to South Carolina taxpayers were exposed when a user’s credentials were compromised by a phishing attack. Multiple employees received email with malicious link and one of them fell prey by clicking the link which in turn executed malware and had stolen the credentials of the user’s. Afterwards the attacker had used the authorized credentials to log into different server over the next couple of days and compromised a total of 44 systems to steal the sensitive data of the taxpayers. As a result, the department had offered free credit monitoring for taxpayers who filed tax return electronically from 1998 to 2012. Though the scammers keep changing their tactics but a little awareness of the site before clicking on links that appear in random emails and instant messages can mitigate the risk. If the network of the department was protected by high-quality firewalls and the systems had anti-virus software installed, the attack might not have happened at this huge level. Moreover if the users’ accounts were protected by multi-level authentication, it wouldn’t be that easy for the attackers to compromise multiple servers with just one user’s information. A government’s department who is handling millions of taxpayers records, could have also customized there browser with anti-phishing toolbars. There are ways to be a victim of social engineering attacks and more ways to avoid that. It just need a little awareness of what is happening in the world and use that knowledge when working over the network. With these little responsibilities, it is not difficult to win over the spammers. Reference: South Carolina Department of Revenue Public Incident Response Report November 20, 2012 ... Purchase answer to see full attachment