Social engineering part 1 (What is it?)

A quick description of what SE really is.

Please excuse the shortness of the article.

(Please excuse the shortness of the article.)

What is Social engineering.

SE is the Human side of breaking into a network or machine.

AKA

"The ART OF MANIPULATION"
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Social engineering is the acquisition of sensitive information or inappropriate access privileges by an outsider,
based upon building of inappropriate trust relationships with outsiders.

The goal of a social engineer is to trick someone into providing valuable information or access to that information.

It preys on qualities of human nature, such as the desire to be helpful, the tendency to trust people and the fear
of getting in trouble.
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It can also be defined as the human side of breaking into a network. people with authentication process, firewalls, virtual private networks and network monitoring software are still wide open to attacks.

if this is intended for a company it can be used in a way that an employee may unwittingly give away key information in an email or by answering questions over the phone with someone they don't know or even by talking about a project with co-workers at a local bar after hours.


social engineering is a powerful tool because it can not be defended against by software or hardware and since people are usually the weakest link in the security chain it is even more difficult to fix.
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I want to go more in depth on this subject. I would also like to discuss the different kinds of SE but i won't have enough room to put it in one article so i will most likely post three or for articles each one covering a different aspects