NII Social Engineering Case Study

Exploiting the human weakness
www.niiconsulting.com

Presentation by: Wasim ‘washal’ Halani
Network Intelligence India Pvt. Ltd.

Network Intelligence, incorporated in 2001, is a
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 Information security
at every organization
is one of the most
important aspects!

 It is people who
handle this
information

 Social Engineering is
exploiting the
weakness link – the
employees


“Social Engineering is the act of manipulating
people into performing actions or divulging
confidential information, rather than by
breaking in or using technical hacking
techniques; essentially a fancier, more
technical way of lying.”

[Source: Wikipedia]


 Wordpress vulnerability on the blogs of their
websites

Kevin ‘don’t call me a security expert’ Mitnick

Dan ‘I smile when I am hacked’ Kaminsky


 Phishing
 Baiting
 Identity Theft
 Dumpster Diving
 Email Scams
 Use of Authority
 Request for Help
 Indulging Curiosity
 Exploiting Greed
=Abuse of Trust


 IT/ITES Company
 Two offices
 About 400 – 500 employees
 We had previously conducted other security
projects for them
 Guards were familiar with us
 We also knew a few people from our previous
projects


 Only 3 people in the organization aware of
the exercise
 Obtain ‘get-out-of-jail-free’ card!
 Bought a spy pen-cam
 Create fake authorization letters
◦ Fake letterhead (thank-you Photoshop)
◦ Fake signatures
◦ Fake content
 Understand the organization’s process flow
 Obtain employee list
 Define ‘targets’

 Security Auditor
◦ Surprise audit on behalf of Government Agency
◦ Chinese attacks on Indian institution (same-day
newspaper headlines )
 College Student
◦ Research project
 Customer
◦ Call-center
 Phishing
 Social Networking

 Visit the office
 Convince the guard to let me in for the
surprise security audit
◦ “It won’t be a surprise if you tell anyone”
 Once again we interviewed people
◦ Some suspicious
◦ Reading is not verifying
 Dumpster diving


 Gain unauthorized access
 Stay back late, after almost all employees left
◦ Photograph the office
 ‘Steal’ sensitive documents
◦ From open drawers
 Check personal folders kept on desks

 Sensitive information on technologies used
 Network architecture revealed
 Lot of technical information revealed to
“college student” doing a project, as well as
journalist
 Found bundle of official letter heads in store-
room
 Gained access to the Server Rooms


 We registered a domain with a single letter
difference
◦ Registered email accounts
 Prepared a ‘Employee Complaint/Feedback
Form’
◦ Company header, styling etc.
 Sent out mails to on behalf of HR person
 Employees are asked to enter their
‘credentials’ to log in to the system
 The final page has a PDF that is to be
downloaded as a ‘unique token number’


 About 10 users entered their credentials
which we captured
 No one downloaded the PDF 
 Took about 10-15 mins. for HR dept. to be
alerted
◦ They sent out an email denying the fake email
 One employee had a discussion with HR and
responded back to our email address


 Linkedin
◦ Fake employee profile
 Searched for people not listed in the network
◦ Joined the company ‘network’
◦ Sent out invites
 Facebook
◦ Multiple fake profiles
 Added each other as friends


 Turns out they had a new employee
 Everyone thought his was the ‘fake’ profile
 Very difficult to identify the real profile
 ‘Attractive’ profiles  receive friend requests


 Confidential…


Contact:
 wasim.halani@niiconsulting.com
 http://www.niiconsulting.com
 @washalsec


NII Social Engineering Case Study

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