2. Reconnaissance is the process of collecting information
about a particular target using both physical and
technical methods.
The most important principle followed by hackers in
reconnaissance is that any kind of information which is
highly valuable.
Reconnaissance methods include both legal illegal
activities. For example- collecting information from
the websites is legal activity. However collecting
confidential information using social engineering and
physical methods is illegal activity.
3. While collecting information, hackers cannot predict the use of
that information. For example-consider the information about
the e-mail address of a system administrator. You might consider
this information to be of no importance in any hacking activity.
However hackers can use this e-mail address for e-mail
spamming.
The publicly available information includes:
• Names of organizations and individuals.
• Country names
• Home and office address
• Phone numbers
• Domain names
• Operating system
• Internet service providers
4. Confidential information includes:
• User passwords
• Company policy manuals
• Business strategies
Now there are two types of reconnaissance:
1. Active reconnaissance
2. Passive reconnaissance
5. In this process, hacker directly interact with the
computer system to gain information. This information
can be relevant and accurate. But there is a risk of
getting detected if hacker is planning active
reconnaissance without permission. If detected, then
system admin can take severe action against intruder
and trail subsequent activities.
The attacker often uses port scanning, for example, to
discover any vulnerable ports. After a port scan, an
attacker usually exploits known vulnerabilities of
services associated with open ports that were detected.
6. In this process, you will not be directly connected to a
computer system. This process is used to gather
essential information without ever interacting with the
target systems.
Methods of passive reconnaissance include:
• War driving to detect vulnerable wireless networks.
• Looking for information stored on discarded computers
and other devices.
• Masquerading as an authorized network user.
7. Social engineering is the art of manipulating users of a
computing system into revealing confidential
information that can be used to gain unauthorized
access to a computer system. The term can also include
activities such as exploiting human kindness, greed,
and curiosity to gain access to restricted access
buildings or getting the users to installing backdoor
software.
Social engineering is an attack that relies heavily on
human interaction and often involves tricking people
into breaking normal security procedures.
8. To access information about a person , a social engineer
must gain trust of that person.
To gain trust , social engineers must use different social
engineering techniques.
The different social engineering techniques are:
• Impersonation
• Bribery
• Deception
• Conformity
• Reverse social engineering
9. Impersonation is the technique of collecting
information by acting as legitimate user or authorized
employee.
Impersonation is an extremely successful social
engineering method.
Hackers might use this general belief to cheat people.
While impersonating , a social engineer typically works
in one of the following methods:
• Before impersonation social engineer performs some
basic research about the target in order to avoid any
suspicion.
10. • A social engineer might approach a user as a system
administrator or an IT support executive and ask for
their passwords.
• A social engineer might make a phone call to a
helpdesk and ask for information by using the name of
legitimate user.
11. Bribery is traditional way of collecting information by
manipulating personal greed.
Social engineers use bribery to collect information about
their targets.
A social engineer conduct extensive research to find out
possible target users.
In this technique , social engineers aim at the following
types of employees of the target organization:
• Workers who do not have long term interests with the
organization.
• Employees who are dissatisfied with the organization.
• Employees who are facing financial difficulties.
12. Deception is similar to impersonation.
In deception , a social engineer tries to join the target
organization as an employee or a consultant and
collects information.
Least used method.
13. Conformity is a social engineering technique in which a
hacker convinces a victim that there is no harm in
providing information.
The key point in this technique is the ability of a hacker
to gain the trust of the target user.
The hacker must project must project as the right
person to whom the target user can disclose any
confidential information.
14. Reverse social engineering is technique of projecting a
hacker as an authority to whom people can give confidential
information for solving their problems.
Reverse social engineering requires lot of effort in terms of
research and planning.
A hacker conducts reverse social engineering in the
following manner:
STEP 1-
• The hacker creates a problem in the target system by
attacking on their network.
• For example, the hacker can conduct denial of service
attack to shutdown the critical servers of the target network.
15. STEP 2-
• The hacker advertises that he or she can solve the
problem in the target network.
• This advertisement might prompt the users of the target
system to approach the hacker for solving the problem.
• For example, a hacker can introduce as a security
consultant who can restore and secure the services of
the affected system.
16. STEP 3-
• When the users of the target network trust the hacker,
they request him or her to solve the problem.
• This helps the hacker to obtain access to the target
system.
• While solving the problem the hacker tries to collect
required information .
• The hacker does not collect entire information from
single user in order to avoid any suspicion.
17. Different communication media used by social
engineers are-
• Telephone
• Internet
• E-mail
• Snail mail
18. Telephone are the cheapest and easiest way to contact
people.
Social engineers avoid cordless telephones because of
disturbing voices.
A particular location is identified where the background
voices resemble an office atmosphere.
Most social engineers use female voices when calling the
target user.
Generally people tend to trust women easily as compared to
men, so social engineers use female voices to make use this
human tendency.
Social engineers call multiple users and gather little bit of
information from each of them.
19. Social engineers use websites on the internet to collect
information.
Social engineers create websites that allow users to
participate in online competitions and games.
These websites ask users to create an account.
To create an account users must provide essential
information such as username , passwords etc.
Social engineers use that information for hacking
purposes.
20. Social engineers use e-mail for two purposes.
The first purpose is to send e-mail messages by using
legitimate e-mail accounts.
For example, a social engineer might use e-mail spamming
techniques to send e-mail messages to the users of an
organization from the e-mail address of the system
administrator.
In such e-mail messages, the social engineer might ask the
receivers to send their passwords for correcting problems in
their user accounts.
The second purpose is to send messages for joining online
competitions for getting prizes.
21. Physical intrusion is the traditional technique of social
engineering.
In this technique social engineers physically enters the
premises of an organization for collecting the information.
Social engineers can use physical intrusion along all other
techniques of social engineering.
Before performing physical intrusion a social engineer must
collect some basic information such as:
• Information about physical security structure.
• Functioning of the organization.
• Creating fake identification details and range of valid PIN
numbers.
22. The final step of physical intrusion is to collect
information which includes:-
• Looking around the workstation for some relevant
information such as documents.
• Getting passwords from the computer.
• Installing key logger programs to extract all keystrokes
made by the user.
• Watching users to find out information while they type
passwords.
• Approaching users by pretending to be IT expert.
23. Do not provide any information to unknown people.
Do not disclose any confidential information to anybody on
telephone.
Do not type passwords in front of unknown people.
Do not submit information to any unsecure website.
Do not use same username and password for all accounts.
Verify the credentials of persons asking for information.
Keep confidential documents locked.
Lock the computers when away from the workstation.
Instruct helpdesk employees to provide information with
proper authentication.
