Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. Unlike traditional hacking, which typically involves exploiting vulnerabilities in software, social engineering targets the human element. Attackers use psychological manipulation to deceive individuals into compromising security protocols.
Understanding social engineering is crucial in today’s digital age. With the increasing reliance on technology, the human factor often becomes the weakest link in the security chain. Even the most sophisticated security systems can be rendered ineffective if an attacker successfully manipulates a user into revealing their credentials or clicking on a malicious link.
- Increasing Prevalence: Social engineering attacks are becoming more frequent and sophisticated, affecting individuals and organizations worldwide.
- High Success Rate: These attacks often have a high success rate because they exploit fundamental human traits such as trust, curiosity, and fear.
- Widespread Impact: Successful social engineering attacks can lead to significant financial loss, data breaches, and reputational damage.
- Essential Knowledge: Understanding social engineering tactics is essential for developing effective defense mechanisms and promoting a culture of security awareness.
By studying social engineering, we can better equip ourselves to recognize and counteract these deceptive tactics, ultimately strengthening our overall security framework.
- 🗺️ Roadmap
- 1️⃣ Basics-of-Social-Engineering
- 👾 Tools-for-Social-Engineering
- 😁 Psychological-techniques
- Introduction to Information Security:
- Understanding the concepts of information security and its importance.
- Overview of the principles: confidentiality, integrity, and availability (CIA).
- Fundamentals of Social Engineering:
- Definition of social engineering.
- Historical background and notable examples.
- The role of social engineering in cybersecurity.
- Open Source Intelligence (OSINT):
- Utilizing search engines like Google (advanced Googling).
- Tools for data gathering: Maltego, Shodan, Recon-ng.
- Social Interaction Tools:
- Analyzing social networks and available data.
- Phishing tools and techniques.
- Phishing Attacks:
- Email phishing and spoofed web pages.
- Spear phishing techniques.
- Vishing and Smishing Attacks:
- Voice phishing (vishing) and SMS phishing (smishing).
- Physical Security Exploitation:
- Tailgating and piggybacking techniques.
- Psychological Manipulation Techniques:
- Establishing trust and exploiting it.
- Psychological principles for influencing human behavior.
- Common Social Engineering Tactics:
- Pretexting, baiting, quid pro quo.
- Education and Awareness:
- Training employees and users about social engineering threats.
- Creating a security-aware culture within organizations.
- Security Policies and Protocols:
- Implementing robust security policies.
- Using detection and prevention systems.
- Fundamentals of Dark Psychology:
- Understanding human behavior and vulnerabilities.
- Applying psychological tactics for manipulation.
- Recommended Reading:
- Books on body language, dark psychology, and the art of persuasion.
Phishing involves sending fraudulent emails that appear to come from reputable sources to steal sensitive data like login credentials and credit card numbers.
- Example: An email that looks like it’s from your bank asking you to verify your account details.
Pretexting is the act of creating a fabricated scenario to persuade a victim to release information or perform an action.
- Example: Someone pretending to be from tech support to get your login details.
Baiting involves offering something enticing to an individual in exchange for login information or to infect their system with malware.
- Example: Leaving a USB drive labeled “Confidential” in a public place to tempt someone to use it.
Tailgating occurs when an unauthorized person follows an authorized person into a restricted area.
- Example: An attacker following an employee into a secure building by pretending to have forgotten their access card.
Quid pro quo means offering a service or benefit in exchange for information or access.
- Example: A fake IT technician offering to fix a problem in exchange for login credentials.
People are more likely to comply with requests from an individual in a position of authority.
Individuals tend to follow the actions of others, especially in unfamiliar situations.
Items or information that appear to be in limited supply or available for a limited time are more attractive.
People feel obliged to return favors, so attackers may offer something to gain trust and receive something in return.
Once people commit to something, they are more likely to follow through with it.
People are more likely to be influenced by individuals they like or find attractive.
Regular training on the latest social engineering tactics can help employees recognize and resist manipulation attempts.
Always verify the identity of individuals making unusual requests through independent channels.
Implement and enforce strong security policies that limit the amount of information employees can disclose.
Develop and practice incident response plans to deal with potential social engineering attacks effectively.
Utilize technology like email filters, firewalls, and intrusion detection systems to help identify and block social engineering attempts.
Understanding the basics of social engineering is the first step in protecting yourself and your organization from these types of attacks. By recognizing common techniques and implementing strong defenses, you can reduce the risk and impact of social engineering threats.
For further reading and detailed case studies, explore the other sections of this repository.
Gathering information is a crucial step in social engineering attacks. By using various tools, attackers can collect detailed information about individuals and organizations. This section covers some of the best tools for searching social media accounts, performing Google Dorking, and conducting photo searches.
1. Maltego
Maltego is an interactive data mining tool that renders directed graphs for link analysis. It is useful for discovering relationships between different pieces of information.
- Example: Mapping connections between social media profiles, email addresses, and phone numbers.
The OSINT Framework is a collection of OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) tools for gathering information from publicly available sources. It covers a wide range of categories and tools.
- Example: Using the framework to find tools for searching social media, IP addresses, or domain names.
3. SpiderFoot
SpiderFoot is an open-source intelligence automation tool. It automates the process of gathering and analyzing data from various sources.
- Example: Conducting a thorough investigation of a domain to uncover related email addresses, social media profiles, and more.
4. Recon-ng
Recon-ng is a full-featured web reconnaissance framework. It provides a powerful environment for gathering open-source intelligence.
- Example: Running modules to gather information about a specific target, such as social media profiles or email addresses.
5. Creepy
Creepy is a geolocation OSINT tool that gathers geolocation information from social networking platforms and image metadata. It visualizes the gathered data on maps.
- Example: Collecting location data from social media posts and mapping the movements of an individual.
1. Epieos
Epieos is a tool for searching email addresses to find associated social media accounts. It can reveal a lot of personal information linked to an email.
- Example: Searching for an email address to find all related social media profiles.
Social Searcher allows you to search for public content on various social networks in real-time. It helps in tracking mentions, analyzing sentiments, and finding trends.
- Example: Monitoring a specific keyword or username across multiple social media platforms.
Check Usernames is a tool to verify the availability of usernames across multiple social networks. It helps in finding the same username on different platforms.
- Example: Searching for a specific username to see if it is used on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn.
That's Them offers a reverse phone lookup service to find detailed information about the owner of a phone number, including social media profiles.
- Example: Entering a phone number to uncover associated social media accounts and other personal information.
What's My Name is a tool for identifying which websites a username is registered on. It helps in tracking a person's online presence across various platforms.
- Example: Checking if a specific username is registered on major social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.
Google Dorking involves using advanced search techniques to find information that is not readily available through standard search queries. It helps in discovering sensitive data exposed unintentionally.
- Example Search:
intext:"@example.com" filetype:pdfto find PDF files containing email addresses from the example.com domain.
Google Images allows users to perform reverse image searches to find the source and other instances of an image on the web. It is useful for identifying the origin of a photo and finding related images.
- Example: Uploading an image or pasting the URL of an image to see where it appears on other websites.
Yandex Images offers reverse image search capabilities similar to Google Images. It often provides different results, making it a valuable tool for comprehensive searches.
- Example: Uploading an image to discover its online presence and related images on different platforms.
3. FaceCheck.ID ( it is suggested ❤️)
FaceCheck.ID is a face recognition search engine that helps find social media profiles by searching a photo. It can identify individuals across various social media platforms.
- Example: Uploading a photo to find associated social media profiles and online activity.
4. PimEyes
PimEyes is a powerful reverse image search tool that helps find where an image appears online. It is useful for tracking the use of personal photos.
- Example: Uploading a photo to see where it has been used on the internet.
5. GeoSpy
GeoSpy is a tool for finding the location of a photo. It uses metadata and other techniques to determine where a picture was taken.
- Example: Uploading a photo to determine its geographic location.
6. TinEye
TinEye is another reverse image search tool that allows users to find where an image appears on the web. It can help in tracking the origin of a photo.
- Example: Using TinEye to check if a profile picture is used elsewhere on the internet.
By utilizing these tools, social engineers can gather extensive information about individuals and organizations. Awareness and understanding of these tools are essential for both attackers and defenders in the field of cybersecurity.