Social Engineering and Spear Phishing Quiz

Social Engineering

• Social engineering relies on understanding, practicing, and trusting one's gut feeling to execute attacks.
• Strategies include making assumptions, preparation, keeping it simple, avoiding detection, and not lying.
• Tactics include mimicking desired characteristics, like "like likes like," and targeting personality types, such as being friendly.
• Other tactics include using inside information, employing name-dropping, and using authority, supplications, sympathy, sex appeal, and greed to persuade or manipulate.
• Two approaches for influencing someone include threatening them and enticing them.

Spear Phishing Methods

• Spear phishing uses various methods, including emails, phone calls, text messages, and walkie-talkies.
• The goal is to compromise the target computer and obtain user credentials for applications.
• Methods to achieve this include setting up phishing websites, utilizing client-side exploits, and creating custom Trojan backdoors.

Wireless Recon

• In wireless reconnaissance, the goal is to gather information about a target organization's remote workers.
• Data collection may include locations such as home addresses, offices, and places they regularly visit, like luncheon places.
• Wireless attacks typically have three phases: reconnaissance, attacking the wireless access point, and attacking wireless clients.

Wireless Network Cards

• Essential features to consider when selecting a wireless network card include the supported wireless standard, antenna support, connection types, and power capabilities.
• Common wireless recon tools include Kismet, Airodumps, and Android applications.

Malware

• Malwares include Trojan horses, viruses, and worms.
• Malwares may enter systems via removable devices, attachments, fake programs, and untrusted websites.
• Malware distribution methods include using black hat search engines, spear phishing sites, and compromised legitimate websites.
• Trojans are used to create backdoors for gaining remote access and generating false traffic to create denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
• Trojans can be used for recording screenshots, audio, and video on a victim's computer, downloading spyware and adware files, and for sending malicious emails.
• Trojans also enable infections of other systems.
• One of the methods to construct a Trojan is with a dropper and a wrapper. A wrapper binds a Trojan EXE to an innocent looking application. This wrapper combines the two programs into a single file.
• Techniques for evading anti-virus software include dividing Trojans into multiple parts and zipping them into a single file.
• Building your own is another important method.
• Trojans can also be embedded into applications, and you can change the Trojan syntax using a specialized editor.
• Avoid using Trojans downloadable from the web.

Virus Transmission and Characteristics

• The common transmission modes for viruses include file downloads, injected flash drives, and email attachments.
• Viruses affect other programs, corrupt data, transform themselves, corrupt other files, encrypt themselves, and replicate.
• Virus stages include design, propagation, launching, and detection followed by incorporation and elimination.
• One of the reasons why people create viruses can be for financial gain, play pranks, vandalism, cyber terrorism, or for research projects.

Virus Infection and Detection

• Infections can happen through downloading files without verifying the source, opening infected email attachments, installing pirated software, not upgrading plugins, or not running the latest anti-virus software
• To detect Trojans, it is possible to scan for suspicious files and folders and scan for suspicious network activities.
• Further measures can be taken by scanning for suspicious windows services, device drivers, and running a dedicated Trojan scanner.

Trojan, Spyware, and Keylogger Countermeasures

• Keylogger countermeasures include using popup blockers, installing antivirus programs, setting up firewalls, deleting phishing emails, avoiding junk email, using a firewall, and disabling auditing.
• Spyware countermeasures include using anti spyware programs and strengthening computer security levels.
• Regular checks of the task manager and caution with suspicious emails are also beneficial.

Sniffing

• Sniffing data can be passive (monitoring traffic on hubs to all ports) or active (snifing a switch-based network).
• Information obtained through sniffing includes Telnet passwords, router configurations, FTP passwords, web traffic, and email traffic.
• Protocols vulnerable to sniffing include HTTP, Telnet, rlogin, POP, IMAP, SMTP, NNTP, and FTP.
• Active wiretapping involves monitoring, recording, altering, and injecting into communication.
• Passive wiretapping only monitors and records traffic.
• To protect against sniffing, use HTTPS instead of HTTP, switches instead of hubs, SFTP instead of FTP and utilize VPNs and one-time passwords.

Footprinting and Password Attacks

• Footprinting modules involve identifying IP ranges, names, paces, and employees of a target organization.
• Activities of the module include target assessment, identifying systems and services.
• Enumeration modules involve intrusive probing, user lists, and security flaws.
• Password attacks can be non-electronic, active online, passive online, and offline.
• Techniques for password guessing usually start with ranking passwords from high to low probability and attempting each one until the correct one is found.

Privilege Escalation

• Privilege escalation can be vertical (gaining higher privileges) or horizontal (gaining the same level of privileges as existing users).
• Defenses include using encryption, implementing multi-factor authentication, and regularly patching the system.

Test your knowledge on social engineering tactics and spear phishing methods with this quiz. Explore various strategies that attackers use to manipulate individuals, including psychological tactics and technological approaches. Understand how to recognize these threats to better protect yourself and your information.