These days, social media has become more of an art of juggling things so that people give out their confidential information without even bothering to notice the severity of the topic. Multiple social engineering cyber attack schemes are scattered across the internet; however, social engineering techniques might steal any user’s credentials.
Although huge organizations go to great extents to address the potential security risks within their IT structure, an organization’s helpdesk might pose a significant threat because of social engineering cyber attack.
Gaining Access With Social Engineering
- The first step in such attacks is gathering information about the target organization.
- The attacker may use free online information to determine which organization departments have access to the most sensitive information.
- After knowing the credentials of a particular user, the next step is to identify the user’s username.
- With all this information available, the attacker contacts the organization’s helpdesk and requests a password change.
- The actual reason behind the call may not be to get a password change but to gather information about what kind of questions the helpdesk may ask before granting a change of password.
- Hence the attacker will get an idea of some things that he needs to know beforehand.
Social Engineering Cyber Attack And Role Of Security Questions
Sadly, security questions have proven to be relatively ineffective. Any experienced hacker can easily crack such security questions. The Dark Web itself, for example, contains large databases of such questions and their answers.
The end-users often give away too much information on their social media platforms; hence these security questions are often too easy to crack once the attacker gets basic information.
Caller ID information has also been used as a tool for verifying a user’s ID. But because attackers can use cloud-based PBX systems to impersonate caller ID information, this system is also unreliable.
How Can An Organization Protect Itself From Such An Attack?
Prevent the helpdesk crew from resetting passwords using the Active Directory Users or Computer console or other similar tools. Make it simply impossible for any helpdesk technician to provide any information that may help the attacker, knowingly or unknowingly. That’s the key.
It’s better to use a third-party solution to protect a helpdesk technician from changing the password until and unless specific requirements are met.
Possible Solution:
The IT system can design the software so that the username is connected to the user’s mobile phone that has previously been registered with the organization. The helpdesk technician would be unaware of the code, and the legit user can read it to the technician, who can then change the password. In this way, the chance of getting scammed by a hacker is reduced multi-folds, and if there’s actually a legit case, that problem is resolved too.
Email verification is another valid option, but it still has a few flaws like every other system.
Thus, verifying the users at the helpdesk can help prevent social engineering cyberattacks that have become widespread.
Rogue Logics provides in-depth security services for the assessment and protection of your application, data, and infrastructure against potential threats on-prem or in the cloud.
Want a consultation with the professionals at Rogue Logics, contact us and get a free quote.