Cyber Crime Theories Law Essay Research Coursework

Cyber Crime Theories
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Introduction
According to Christopher Hadnagy(2011), social engineering (SE) is the manipulation of an individual to take an action that may or may not be in their best interest. This could be achieved through acquiring information, accessing; or prompting the targeted person to take a certain action. TLP White (2015), says that in the field of cyber security, social engineering is the manipulation of persons with intention to press them to carry out a particular action or to disclose information that could be beneficial to the attacker.
In itself, social engineering does not necessarily require extensive technical know-how in order to be successful. Its success is anchored on normal human behavioral traits leaving very few technical solutions to curb it. It thrives on psychological human aspects such as being too gullible, curios, greedy, shy, thoughtless and courteous. The attackers, over time, have developed various forms of social engineering tactics that they employ to successfully manipulate their targets, take advantage of latest technological developments and situational loop-holes.
Forms of Social Engineering Tactics That Hackers Employ
In many cases, social engineering tactics are employed to drop-ship malicious software although in a few instances it only forms part of the entire attack by aiding access to additional information, defrauding the victim or gaining access to secure systems (TLP White, 2015). SE techniques vary widely from easily identifiable wide scale attacks to complex multi-layered styled attacks that can hardly be differentiated from authentic interactions.
Some commonly used forms of social engineering tactics and respective examples are explained below.
Phishing
This is the deception-based attempt to pilfer personal or confidential information by impersonating a well-known or familiar person (TLP White, 2015). Phishing activities mostly offer deals that are too good to be true or have a sense of emergency/warning. It is the commonest form of social engineering with a large proportion of victims reporting phishing over the last decade. However, most of wide-scale phishing attacks are not sophisticated and are easily identifiable by majority, but not all, of computer users. Even so, recent trends indicate that this form of social engineering tactic is becoming increasingly sophisticated, more so email phishing, with attackers using various techniques that appear legitimate. Such techniques prompt the victim to act without giving their action much thought.
Examples of Phishing include email phishing (most common), phishing via phone calls; text messages, fax and social media. Another emerging example of phishing is the attacker uses major events in the news by purporting to have new information about the event and asking unsuspecting victims to take action such as donation of funds towards the event.
Baiting
This is another form of large scale social engineering tactics that uses online adverts and website links which usually contain malicious codes. Just like phishing, it comes with too-good-to-be-true offers or emergency ...