Social engineering is a form of psychological manipulation that is becoming increasingly sophisticated. Criminals have developed a unique sense and strategy to fool people, through social learning. Technology is continuously expanding and more and more social connections are creating new platforms for cyber crime to take place. Cyber criminals learn from what the see online and discover methods to manipulate victims through confidence tricks to influence their behaviour.
International police agency Interpol, expresses social engineering as one of the worlds most emerging fraud trends. It is explained why, because of its ease of creation and distribution. You don't need to be a skilled hacker, just someone willing to communicate with people and write emails. Plus, the growth of the internet has played right into the hands of the criminals and it is now very easy to gather information about a target. A key part of social engineering is having information on your victim and criminals can easily get this from buying hacked company data and studying their victim's social profile.
Socialengineering.org have compiled research fro a survey to figure out statistics leading towards cyber crime. They found out,
- 90% of the people we ask will provide not just the spelling of their names but their email addresses without confirming our identity
- 67% of the people we ask will give out social security numbers, birth dates or employee numbers
- We have a 100% success ratio in physical breaches
The data collected is truly shocking, but it is a human error we all can make when not 100% focused. Also, they have compiled more research data into an info-graph that clearly depicts the methods and strategies cyber-criminals use to manipulate their victims, who are the main targets and financial statistics. As well as, security and defensive precautions to help you avoid becoming a victim.
90% of emails are scams, this is astonishing. I have discovered that most common cyber crime attacks mimic banking institutions. This is because, people trust banks and believe they are sincere, professional and dependable. Making it a great platform for criminals to illude victims. They often create a false situation and say, 'you account has been compromised' and informing you to transfer your money into some other accounts they have set up in the victims name for safe keeping. They would reinforce the situation with measurements with emails, letters, phone calls and act very professional in general to create a believable atmosphere.
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