How to Prevent Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks

As we know that technology makes our life simple and comfortable but every good things always have some drawbacks.we can see high growth especially in the field of Information Technology and impact of IT in our daily life from online shopping to Internet Banking everything is possible with a single click and touch on our smart phone. one thing which we can not ignore is growth in Information Technology also resulted growth in cyber crime.

How many of us aware of cyber crime and method used by a hacker?

In another way, we can say that Information Technology and cyber crime are directly proportional to each other. Information Technology growth also in results Growth in Cyber Crime to know more about Phishing attacks and its prevention read my Previous post How to Prevent Against Phishing Attacks in this post we will learn a various aspect of Social Engineering and Phishing Attack and methods to prevent yourself from this types of attacks.

How to Prevent Social Engineering and Phishing Attacks

”Social engineering is an attack vector that relies heavily on human interaction and often involves tricking people into breaking normal security procedures.”

In our daily life, we heard so many cases and read in the newspaper like Hacking of banking password, credit card detail, money withdraw from person’s bank account. It is very uncertain that how many percentages of people who are using the Internet are aware of the cyber crime or in another way we can say social engineering.

Social Engineering is defined as” Method and technique used by a cybercriminal to achieve their target”.

Nowadays Hacker or social engineer got power because of high growth in information technology. social engineer using various method t hack personal detail.

For Example

suppose you have a bank account in www.xyzbank.com A Social Engineer ( Hacker ) can send you a mail like” due to some technical problem www.xyzbank.com has lost its data, click on below link to provide data so we can save your all account detail.

Link
www.xyzbank.com/application.php

if you fill up this application form and you’re are not aware of that is mail is not coming from www.xyzbank.com then the social engineer can get you all bank information just a click away.

The Same way a Social Engineer send you a mail like this” You have won the lottery of Rs. 5 lakh, please fill the application form below so we can deposit lottery amount into your account.” even though you have not purchased any such type lottery.

A hacker might be sent a Malware to your system during your online activity and this malware sent your all personal detail to the hacker.

Today’s Social Engineers are very smart rather than doing a small thing as above they might be hacking your web browser, if your web browser got hacked by a Social Engineer then all information browsed by you in your web browser goes to the hacker.

Common Methods of Social Engineers Attacks

1. Sniffing
2. Spoofing

1. Sniffing
Sniffing is a process by which Social Engineer (hacker) try to find user password. There are mainly three type of Sniffing

A. Password Showing: Password showing is the way by which a user disclosed his or her password to a hacker.

B. Password Guessing: Password guessing involves to guess the password by a number of attempts.

C. Password Capturing: Password Capturing involve to have the user password with the use of some Malware program.

2.Spoofing
Spoofing a process by which a social engineer may alter e-mail header to make it appear that a request for info originated from another address this process known as spoofing.

Security Tips from Social Hackers’ Attacks

• Be aware of Trojan horse program, A Trojan horse program is a software that might be useful for your PC like install this software, it will increase your speed of your system.
• Always update your system with latest Antivirus software and use the latest version of operating system.
• Always install your own Firewall and Antispyware to protect your system to social engineer.
• Always change your password after a certain period of time.
• Keep verifying your Credit card statement and bank balance if anything happens wrong with you immediately inform the bank.
• Always modify your web browser setting according to your requirement. Always use modern web browser which includes Google Chrome , Mozilla Firefox, Safari and Opera.
• Always update your web browser if you are using an older version of web browser update it with new version.
• Shop online with only reputable web portable that provides your online security.
• Open website directly typing in the address bar of your web browser never open a website by clicking on any link.
• Do not reply any such type of e-mail that is asking for your personal information.
• Before providing your personal information to any website always check Privacy Policy of that website.
• Always delete or limit cookies if you are using a public computer if you are using FireFox after browsing press Shift+Ctrl+Del and this works with most of the all web browser to clear history and if you are using Internet Explorer then you can do same thing Tool → Internet option to clear your private data.

Final Thoughts

Using the power of Information technology blindly may harm you one day because every good thing also has some drawback side, as per my point of view every internet user must have basic awareness about Cyber Security. Phishing Scams are one of the major cyber crime which a social engineer always prefer because it is directly related to money. As far as India is concerned where the major population still not m the ch more aware about Cyber Security but Indian Government and Indian Banks are doing a good job to educate people about Cyber Security.