Hi, My Name is Bernie

If you have been reading my Personal Technology Security Series posts, you now know that online fraud and cybercrime are mostly done with minimal or even no hacking involved.  A lot of victims' accounts were compromised through social engineering -- the victims were somehow tricked into disclosing enough information so that allowed fraudsters to perform transactions in their name.  I know of a lot of cases where the victims themselves disclosed their passwords through phishing/SMISHING/VISHING and their savings go missing in front of their eyes.  Credit/debit card holders unwittingly disclosing their card numbers and watch as their debts rack up. But social engineering is not the only way cybercriminals and fraudsters gather information that they can use to do their nefarious jobs.  One way they get useful information is through carelessy trashed account statements from banks and credit card companies.  This document contains everything that a cybercri...

Yesterday, I discussed two most successful and most prevalent social engineering tactics used nowadays. One emerging tactic that may not be as widespread but just as damaging is VISHING.  What is VISHING? According to wikipedia, VISHING is a form of criminal phone fraud, using social engineering over the telephone system to gain access to private personal and financial information for the purpose of financial gains. How does it work? Unsuspecting victims will receive a phone call from someone claiming to work for their bank.  The caller will claim that the victim's credit/debit or ATM card needs to be verified to prevent it from being deactivated.  The caller will then ask for the victim's personal information for "verification".  The caller will also ask for the card's CVV/CVC number (it is the three-digit number at the back of the card). To make the conversation appear legitimate, other questions may be asked but all the fraudster actually need from the ...

Fun fact: Not all malicious "Hacking" incidents involves actual hacking actiities.  In fact, a large perceentage of so-called "hacking" victims in fact does not involve any computer hacking whatsoever. Before I continue, let me first define what hacking really is. Hacking is a series of activities including surveying target systems and identifying and exploiting any vulnerabilites identified on the target system.  Sounds rather exciting but actual hacking activities invloves a lot of patience and a little bit of luck to be successful.  Depending on the implemented security of the system that is targetted for a hack, the activity will take at least a few hours up to a couple of days even weeks!  Imagine taking weeks in order to compromise accounts. That being said, we can safely say that hacking is not an easy thing to pull off in order to be "profitable". The easier way to steal enough information to compromise accounts.  This is where "Social Eng...