Högskolan i Skövde

It is important to know the security readiness of any organization in order to strengthen it. One often neglected aspect of security is the human element, which is often attacked by social engineering” techniques. This paper studies to what extent users are aware and susceptible to common social engineering attacks, and if a quantitative approach to enetration testing of social engineering can be used. By employing a quantitative study under the false pretense of studying “micro efficiency”, an organization with above average skilled users was surveyed on three classic social engineering cons. The results indicate that the approach could be useful as a part of, or as a stand alone auditing technique. The human element is not only vulnerable, but vulnerable to the extent that it shadows most other security measures. The author argues for the necessity of education in order to counter the serious threat of social engineering, since it in many cases complies with the principle of adequate protection.

Purpose – This paper aims to use user-centred security development of a prototype graphical interface for a management information system dealing with information security with upper-level management as the intended users.

Design/methodology/approach – The intended users were studied in order to understand their needs. An iterative design process was used where the designs were first made on paper, then as a prototype interface and later as a final interface design. All was tested by subjects within the target user group.

Findings – The interface was perceived as being successful by the test subjects and the sponsoring organization, Siguru. The major conclusion of the study is that managers use knowledge of information security mainly for financial and strategic matters which focus more on risk issues than security issues. To facilitate the need of managers the study presents three heuristics for the design of management information security system interfaces.

Research limitations/implications – This interface was tested on a limited set of users and further tests could be done, especially of users with other cultural/professional backgrounds.

Practical implications – This paper presents a useful set of heuristics that can be used in development of management information systems as well as other practical tips for similar projects.

Originality/value – This paper gives an example of a successful user-centred security development process. The lessons learned could be beneficial in software development in general and security products in particular.

This chapter introduces the concept of social psychology, and what forms of deception humans are prone to fall for. It presents a background of the area and a thorough description of the most common and important influence techniques. It also gives more practical examples of potential attacks, and what kind of influence techniques they use, as well as a set of recommendations on how to defend against deception, and a discussion on future trends. The author hopes that the understanding of why and how the deceptive techniques work will give the reader new insights into information security in general, and deception in particular. This insight can be used to improve training, to discover influence earlier, or even to gain new powers of influence.

In this paper we propose a model for describing deceptive crimes in general and social engineering in particular. Our research approach was naïve inductivist and the methods used were literature study and interviews with the lead investigator in a grooming case, as we see many similarities between the techniques used in grooming, and those used in social engineering. From this we create cycles describing attacker, defender, and the victim and merge them into a model describing the cycle of deception. The model is then extended into a possible deception sphere. The resulting models can be used to educate about social engineering, to create automated social engineering attacks, to facilitate better incident reporting, and to understand the impact and economical aspects of defenses.

This paper proposes a soft approach for social engineering penetration testing. By using the SBC model as a foundation, questions related to the social element of security were asked in semi-structured interviews to a group of subjects. The answers were analyzed and presented in an uncomplicated graph. The purpose was to study the feasibility of letting the users participate, instead of exploiting their weaknesses. It was found that the approach of interviewing the subjects rendered interesting, and relevant, results, making it an approach that should be studied further due to its apparent gains: less ethically troublesome penetration testing, increased awareness, improved coverage and novel information as added bonuses.

This paper presents the result of a case study of the readiness of four large Swedish multinational corporations to deal with automated social engineering attacks. A preliminary study to review how the security policy of a large corporation deals with social engineering attacks was performed. The results from this study were combined with a conceptual model of social engineering when constructing a new interview protocol and a grading scale. This interview protocol was designed to measure the readiness of an organization to deal with social engineering attacks in general, and in this case with automated social engineering in particular. Four interviews were conducted with senior security managers and senior employees. Results indicate that no organization was over 60% on the readiness scale and thus all are considered at risk of attack.