How to outsmart the silver-tongued hacker
Brien M Posey
Published: 28 Apr 2003 16:50 BST
New twist to an old scheme
I am also starting to see more subtle uses of social engineering that rely on traditional hacking techniques and the popularity of the Web. For example, a bank was a recent victim to one such social engineering scheme. The hacker registered an Internet domain name that was very similar to the bank's real domain name. Next, the hacker created an official looking form and telephoned bank employees to tell them there was going to be a change to their benefits package and that they needed to go to this particular Web site and fill out the new benefits form. The hacker then told them that the Web site required authentication and to simply enter their normal logon name and password.
Of course, the Web site was not actually performing authentication. Instead, the supposed authentication mechanism was nothing more than a Web form that collected usernames and passwords and entered them into a database. All the hacker then had to do was to examine the databases contents to retrieve usernames, passwords, and other personal information.
Windows XP remote assistance scheme
Yet another new social engineering stunt involves exploiting Windows XP's remote assistance. It involves someone claiming to be from the IT department asking an employee if he can connect to the computer via remote assistance for the purpose of loading a security patch. After the connection is made, a spyware module is loaded onto the machine. The spyware module then collects username and password information and e-mails which it transmits to the hacker. The beauty of this technique is that the hacker never has to ask for a password. Instead, the user actually lets the hacker work on his machine by remote control. Since the user never actually sees the hacker's face, the hacker's identity is protected, especially if specific path routing is used.
Specific path routing is a technique by which a hacker can direct the path of a TCP/IP connection between him and his victim. This technique is often used to obscure the hacker's true IP address or geographic location.
Other schemes that have traditionally been done over the phone are now starting to show up in instant messaging and in IRC-based chats. According to Internet security Web site CERT, this exploit commonly involves tricking the user into downloading either a spyware module or a module that can be used by the hacker in a distributed denial of service attack.
One particular message that is sometimes used to trick people into downloading these malicious programs is, "You are infected with a virus that lets hackers get into your machine and read your files, etc. I suggest downloading [malicious filename] and cleaning your machine. Otherwise, you will be banned from the IRC network."
To prevent situations like this, I recommend installing ViRobot from Hauri onto everyone's machines. [Editor's Note: obviously, before you do this you must convince yourself that Brien Posey and ZDNet are not social engineers.]
If ViRobot is running, users can rest assured that they don't have a virus, plus ViRobot is designed to spot various hacker tools that could have been installed through this or other similar exploits.
What you can do
Many companies are becoming aware of the risks of new social engineering techniques and have begun to develop policies designed to combat them. One of the most widely publicised examples of such a policy is the way AOL tells its customers that no customer support representative will ever ask them for their password.
Unfortunately, there are countless other techniques available to the hacker. The only real defence against them is to use strong passwords and to educate your users about the different types of schemes, warning them especially about the hidden dangers of innocent conversation.
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