Social Engineering

Malware creators have used social engineering to maximize the range or impact of their viruses, worms, etc. For example, the ILoveYou worm used social engineering to entice people to open malware-infected e-mail messages. The ILoveYou worm attacked tens of millions of Windows computers in May 2000 when it was sent as an e-mail attachment with the subject line: ILOVEYOU. Often out of curiosity, people opened the attachment named LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs-releasing the worm. Within nine days, the worm had spread worldwide crippling networks, destroying files, and causing an estimated $5.5 billion in damages.

Notorious hacker Kevin Mitnick, who served time in jail for hacking, used social engineering as his primary method to gain access to computer networks. In most cases, the criminal never comes face-to-face with the victim, but communicates via the phone or e-mail.

Research Kevin Mitnick on the Internet. What was he able to do and how did he do it? Why did it take such a long time to be caught? How was he caught?

Once you have posted your response into the Message field on the forum, your next step is to peruse the postings of your fellow classmates. See the SBT Discussion Rubric for how you will be evaluated for this activity.

Use the subject line as an advanced organizer to allow your classmates and the instructor to have some idea of what you're posting is about, for example a subject line "response to discussion question" is not appropriate. Your responses to fellow students should contain substance, should be more than just opinion, and must go beyond a simple agreement or disagreement.

Initial posts should be at least 150 words in length. Reply posts should be at least 50 words in length.

Compose your work using a word processor and save it, as a Plain Text or an .rtf, to your computer. When you're ready to make your initial posting, please click on the "Create Thread" button and copy/paste the text from your document into the message field. Be sure to check your work and correct any spelling or grammatical errors before you post it.