Cybersecurity Blue Team Toolkit

CHAPTER 13Securing OSI Layer 8

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN IN THIS CHAPTER:

• Human Nature
• Social Engineering Attacks
• Education
• The Social Engineer Toolkit

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”

Quote attributed to Albert Einstein

“There are three kinds of men: The ones who learn by reading, the few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.”

Will Rogers

Most people think that cyberattackers are going to use high‐tech, very advanced techniques to hack into their accounts and infect their systems. The simple truth is that the easiest way to hack a system is through human hacking or social engineering. Kevin Mitnick, world‐renowned social engineer says, “Companies spend millions of dollars on firewalls and secure access devices, and it's money wasted because none of these measures address the weakest link in the security chain: the people who use, administer, and operate computer systems.” It takes only one person clicking one link and downloading one malicious exploit.

Human Nature

We are funny creatures, we humans. We have put men on the moon and nearly wiped out polio on the face of the earth, but when faced with the elevator not coming as fast as we like, we press the button over and over thinking it might speed things up a bit. If I am waiting at the elevator with you, I have already made several assumptions about you and your need to get where you're going ...