THE ART OF DECEPTION

Controlling the Human Element of Security

KEVIN D. MITNICK

& William L. Simon

Foreword by Steve Wozniak

Scanned by kineticstomp, revised and enlarged by swift

For Reba Vartanian, Shelly Jaffe, Chickie Leventhal, and Mitchell

Mitnick, and for the late Alan Mitnick, Adam Mitnick, and Jack Biello

For Arynne, Victoria, and David, Sheldon,Vincent, and Elena.

Social Engineering

Social Engineering uses influence and persuasion to deceive people

by convincing them that the social engineer is someone he is not,

or by manipulation. As a result, the social engineer is able to take

advantage of people to obtain information with or without the use of

technology..Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction

Part 1 Behind the Scenes

Chapter 1 Security's Weakest Link

Part 2 The Art of the Attacker

Chapter 2 When Innocuous Information Isn't

Chapter 3 The Direct Attack: Just Asking for it

Chapter 4 Building Trust

Chapter 5 "Let Me Help You"

Chapter 6 "Can You Help Me?"

Chapter 7 Phony Sites and Dangerous Attachments

Chapter 8 Using Sympathy, Guilt and Intimidation

Chapter 9 The Reverse Sting

Part 3 Intruder Alert

Chapter 10 Entering the Premises

Chapter 11 Combining Technology and Social Engineering

Chapter 12 Attacks on the Entry-Level Employee

Chapter 13 Clever Cons

Chapter 14 Industrial Espionage

Part 4 Raising the Bar

Chapter 15 Information Security Awareness and Training

Chapter 16 Recommended Corporate Information Security Policies

Security at a Glance

Sources

Acknowledgments.Foreword

We humans are born with an inner drive to explore the nature of our

surroundings. As young men, both Kevin Mitnick and I were intensely curious

about the world and eager to prove ourselves. We were rewarded often in our

attempts to learn new things, solve puzzles, and win at games. But at the same

time, the world around us taught us rules of behavior that constrained our inner

urge toward free exploration. For our boldest scientists and technological

entrepreneurs, as well as for people like Kevin Mitnick, following this inner urge

offers the greatest thrills, letting us accomplish things that others believe cannot

be done.

Kevin Mitnick is one of the finest people I know. Ask him, and he will say

forthrightly that what he used to do - social engineering - involes conning people.

But Kevin is no longer a social engineer. And even when he was, his motive

never was to enrich himself or damage others. That's not to say that there aren't

dangerous and destructive criminals out there who use social engineering to

cause real harm. In fact, that's exactly why Kevin wrote this book - to warn you

about them.

The Art of Deception shows how vulnerable we all are - government, business,

and each of us personally - to the intrusions of the social engineer. In this

security-conscious era, we spend huge sums on technology to protect our

computer networks and data. This book points out how easy it is to trick insiders

and circumvent all this technological protection.

Whether you work in business or government, this book provides a powerful road

map to help you understand how social engineers work and what you can do to

foil them. Using fictionalized stories that are both entertaining and eye-opening,

Kevin and co-author Bill Simon bring to life the techniques of the social

engineering underworld. After each story, they offer practical guidelines to help

you guard against the breaches and threats they're described.

Technological security leaves major gaps that people like Kevin can help us

close. Read this book and you may finally realize that we all need to turn to the

Mitnick's among us for guidance.

Steve Wozniak.Preface

Some hackers destroy people's files or entire hard drives; they're called crackers

or vandals. Some novice hackers don't bother learning the technology, but simply

download hacker tools to break into computer systems; they're called script

kiddies. More experienced hackers with programming skills develop hacker

programs and post them to the Web and to bulletin board systems. And then there

are individuals who have no interest in the technology, but use the computer

merely as a tool to aid them in stealing money, goods, or services.

Despite the media-created myth of Kevin Mitnick, I am not a malicious hacker.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

STARTING OUT

My path was probably set early in life. I was a happy-go-lucky kid, but bored.

After my father split when I was three, my mother worked as a waitress to

support us. To see me then - an only child being raised by a mother who put in

long, harried days on a sometimes-erratic schedule - would have been to see a

youngster on his own almost all his waking hours. I was my own babysitter.

Growing up in a San Fernando Valley community gave me the whole of Los

Angeles to explore, and by the age of twelve I had discovered a way to travel free

throughout the whole greater L.A. area. I realized one day while riding the bus

that the security of the bus transfer I had purchased relied on the unusual pattern

of the paper-punch, that the drivers used to mark day; time, and route on the

transfer slips. A friendly driver, answering my carefully planted question, told me

where to buy that special type of punch.

The transfers are meant to let you change buses and continue a journey to your

destination, but I worked out how to use them to travel anywhere I wanted to go

for free. Obtaining blank transfers was a walk in the park.

The trash bins at the bus terminals were always filled with only-partly used books

of transfers that the drivers tossed away at the end of the shifts. With a pad of

blanks and the punch, I could mark my own transfers and travel anywhere that

L.A. buses went. Before long, I had all but memorized the bus schedules of the

entire system. (This was an early example of my surprising memory for certain

types of information; I can still, today, remember phone numbers, passwords, and

other seemingly trivial details as far back as my childhood.)

Another personal interest that surfaced at an early age was my fascination with

performing magic. Once I learned how a new trick worked, would practice,.practice, and practice some more until I mastered it. To an extent, it was through

magic that I discovered the enjoyment in gaining secret knowledge.

From Phone Phreak to Hacker

My first encounter with what I would eventually learn to call social engineering

came about during my high school years when I met another student who was

caught up in a hobby called phone phreakin. Phone phreaking is a type of hacking

that allows you to explore the telephone network by exploiting the phone systems

and phone company employees. He showed me neat tricks he could do with a

telephone, like obtaining any information the phone company had on any

customer, and using a secret test number to make long-distance calls for free.

(Actually it was free only to us. I found out much later that it wasn't a secret test

number at all. The calls were, in fact, being billed to some poor company's MCI

account.)

That was my introduction to social engineering-my kindergarten, so to speak. My

friend and another phone phreaker I met shortly thereafter let me listen in as they

each made pretext calls to the phone company. I heard the things they said that

made them sound believable; I learned about different phone company offices,

lingo, and procedures. But that "training" didn't last long; it didn't have to. Soon I

was doing it all on my own, learning as I went, doing it even better than my first

teachers.

The course my life would follow for the next fifteen years had been set. In high

school, one of my all-time favorite pranks was gaining unauthorized access to the

telephone switch and changing the class of service of a fellow phone phreak.

When he'd attempt to make a call from home, he'd get a message telling him to

deposit a dime because the telephone company switch had received input that

indicated he was calling from a pay phone.

I became absorbed in everything about telephones, not only the electronics,

switches, and computers, but also the corporate organization, the procedures, and

the terminology. After a while, I probably knew more about the phone system

than any single employee. And I had developed my social engineering skills to

the point that, at seventeen years old, I was able to talk most telco employees into

almost anything, whether I was speaking with them in person or by telephone.

My much-publicized hacking career actually started when I was in high school.

While I cannot describe the detail here, suffice it to say that one of the driving

forces in my early hacks was to be accepted by the guys in the hacker group.

Back then we used the term hacker to mean a person who spent a great deal of

time tinkering with hardware and software, either to develop more efficient

programs or to bypass unnecessary steps and get the job done more quickly. The.term has now become a pejorative, carrying the meaning of "malicious criminal."

In these pages I use the term the way I have always used it - in its earlier, more

benign sense.

After high school I studied computers at the Computer Learning Center in Los

Angeles. Within a few months, the school's computer manager realized I had

found vulnerability in the operating system and gained full administrative

privileges on their IBM minicomputer. The best computer experts on their

teaching staff couldn't figure out how I had done this. In what may have been one

of the earliest examples of "hire the hacker," I was given an offer I couldn't

refuse: Do an honors project to enhance the school's computer security, or face

suspension for hacking the system. Of course, I chose to do the honors project,

and ended up graduating cum laude with honors.

Becoming a Social Engineer

Some people get out of bed each morning dreading their daily work routine at

the proverbial salt mines. I've been lucky enough to enjoy my work. n particular,

you can't imagine the challenge, reward, and pleasure I had the time I spent as a

private investigator. I was honing my talents in the performance art called social

engineering (getting people to do things they wouldn't ordinarily do for a

stranger) and being paid for it.

For me it wasn't difficult becoming proficient in social engineering. My father's

side of the family had been in the sales field for generations, so the art of

influence and persuasion might have been an inherited trait. When you combine

that trait with an inclination for deceiving people, you have the profile of a

typical social engineer.

You might say there are two specialties within the job classification of con artist.

Somebody who swindles and cheats people out of their money belongs to one

sub-specialty, the grifter. Somebody who uses deception, influence, and

persuasion against businesses, usually targeting their information, belongs to the

other sub-specialty, the social engineer. From the time of my bus-transfer trick,

when I was too young to know there was anything wrong with what I was doing,

I had begun to recognize a talent for finding out the secrets I wasn't supposed to

have. I built on that talent by using deception, knowing the lingo, and developing

a well-honed skill of manipulation.

One way I worked on developing the skills of my craft, if I may call it a craft,

was to pick out some piece of information I didn't really care about and see if I

could talk somebody on the other end of the phone into providing it, just to

improve my skills. In the same way I used to practice my magic tricks, I practiced.pretexting. Through these rehearsals, I soon found that I could acquire virtually

any information I targeted.

As I described in Congressional testimony before Senators Lieberman and

Thompson years later:

I have gained unauthorized access to computer systems at some of the largest

corporations on the planet, and have successfully penetrated some of the most

resilient computer systems ever developed. I have used both technical and non-technical

means to obtain the source code to various operating systems and

telecommunications devices to study their vulnerabilities and their inner

workings.

All of this activity was really to satisfy my own curiosity; to see what I could do;

and find out secret information about operating systems, cell phones, and

anything else that stirred my curiosity.

FINAL THOUGHTS

I've acknowledged since my arrest that the actions I took were illegal, and that I

committed invasions of privacy.

My misdeeds were motivated by curiosity. I wanted to know as much as I could

about how phone networks worked and the ins-and-outs of computer security. I

went from being a kid who loved to perform magic tricks to becoming the world's

most notorious hacker, feared by corporations and the government. As I reflect

back on my life for the last 30 years, I admit I made some extremely poor

decisions, driven by my curiosity, the desire to learn about technology, and the

need for a good intellectual challenge.

I'm a changed person now. I'm turning my talents and the extensive knowledge

I've gathered about information security and social engineering tactics to helping

government, businesses, and individuals prevent, detect, and respond to

information-security threats.

This book is one more way that I can use my experience to help others avoid the

efforts of the malicious information thieves of the world. I think you will find the

stories enjoyable, eye-opening, and educational..Introduction

This book contains a wealth of information about information security and social

engineering. To help you find your way, here's a quick look at how this book is

organized:

In Part 1 I'll reveal security's weakest link and show you why you and your

company are at risk from social engineering attacks.

In Part 2 you'll see how social engineers toy with your trust, your desire to be

helpful, your sympathy, and your human gullibility to get what they want.

Fictional stories of typical attacks will demonstrate that social engineers can wear

many hats and many faces. If you think you've never encountered one, you're

probably wrong. Will you recognize a scenario you've experienced in these

stories and wonder if you had a brush with social engineering? You very well

might. But once you've read Chapters 2 through 9, you'll know how to get the

upper hand when the next social engineer comes calling.

Part 3 is the part of the book where you see how the social engineer ups the ante,

in made-up stories that show how he can step onto your corporate premises, steal

the kind of secret that can make or break your company, and thwart your hi-tech

security measures. The scenarios in this section will make you aware of threats

that range from simple employee revenge to cyber terrorism. If you value the

information that keeps your business running and the privacy of your data, you'll

want to read Chapters 10 through 14 from beginning to end.

It's important to note that unless otherwise stated, the anecdotes in this book are

purely fictional.

In Part 4 I talk the corporate talk about how to prevent successful social

engineering attacks on your organization. Chapter 15 provides a blueprint for a

successful security-training program. And Chapter 16 might just save your neck -

it's a complete security policy you can customize for your organization and

implement right away to keep your company and information safe.

Finally, I've provided a Security at a Glance section, which includes checklists,

tables, and charts that summarize key information you can use to help your

employees foil a social engineering attack on the job. These tools also provide

valuable information you can use in devising your own security-training program.

Throughout the book you'll also find several useful elements: Lingo boxes

provide definitions of social engineering and computer hacker terminology;

Mitnick Messages offer brief words of wisdom to help strengthen your security.strategy; and notes and sidebars give interesting background or additional

information..Part 1

Behind The Scenes.Chapter 1

Security's Weakest Link

A company may have purchased the best security technologies that money can

buy, trained their people so well that they lock up all their secrets before going

home at night, and hired building guards from the best security firm in the

business.

That company is still totally Vulnerable.

Individuals may follow every best-security practice recommended by the experts,

slavishly install every recommended security product, and be thoroughly vigilant

about proper system configuration and applying security patches.

Those individuals are still completely vulnerable.

THE HUMAN FACTOR

Testifying before Congress not long ago, I explained that I could often get

passwords and other pieces of sensitive information from companies by

pretending to be someone else and just asking for it.

It's natural to yearn for a feeling of absolute safety, leading many people to settle

for a false sense of security. Consider the responsible and loving homeowner who

has a Medico, a tumbler lock known as being pickproof, installed in his front

door to protect his wife, his children, and his home. He's now comfortable that he

has made his family much safer against intruders. But what about the intruder-who

breaks a window, or cracks the code to the garage door opener? How about

installing a robust security system? Better, but still no guarantee. Expensive locks

or no, the homeowner remains vulnerable.

Why? Because the human factor is truly security's weakest link.

Security is too often merely an illusion, an illusion sometimes made even worse

when gullibility, naivete, or ignorance come into play. The world's most

respected scientist of the twentieth century, Albert Einstein, is quoted as saying,

"Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure

about the former." In the end, social engineering attacks can succeed when people

are stupid or, more commonly, simply ignorant about good security practices.

With the same attitude as our security-conscious homeowner, many information

technology (IT) professionals hold to the misconception that they've made their

companies largely immune to attack because they've deployed standard security

products - firewalls, intrusion detection systems, or stronger authentication.devices such as time-based tokens or biometric smart cards. Anyone who thinks

that security products alone offer true security is settling for. the illusion of

security. It's a case of living in a world of fantasy: They will inevitably, later if

not sooner, suffer a security incident.

As noted security consultant Bruce Schneier puts it, "Security is not a product, it's

a process." Moreover, security is not a technology problem - it's a people and

management problem.

As developers invent continually better security technologies, making it

increasingly difficult to exploit technical vulnerabilities, attackers will turn more

and more to exploiting the human element. Cracking the human firewall is often

easy, requires no investment beyond the cost of a phone call, and involves

minimal risk.

A CLASSIC CASE OF DECEPTION

What's the greatest threat to the security of your business assets? That's easy: the

social engineer--an unscrupulous magician who has you watching his left hand

while with his right he steals your secrets. This character is often so friendly, glib,

and obliging that you're grateful for having encountered him.

Take a look at an example of social engineering. Not many people today still

remember the young man named Stanley Mark Rifkin and his little adventure

with the now defunct Security Pacific National Bank in Los Angeles. Accounts of

his escapade vary, and Rifkin (like me) has never told his own story, so the

following is based on published reports.

Code Breaking

One day in 1978, Rifkin moseyed over to Security Pacific's authorized-personnel-only

wire-transfer room, where the staff sent and received transfers totaling

several billion dollars every day.

He was working for a company under contract to develop a backup system for the

wire room's data in case their main computer ever went down. That role gave him

access to the transfer procedures, including how bank officials arranged for a

transfer to be sent. He had learned that bank officers who were authorized to

order wire transfers would be given a closely guarded daily code each morning to

use when calling the wire room.

In the wire room the clerks saved themselves the trouble of trying to memorize

each day's code: They wrote down the code on a slip of paper and posted it where.they could see it easily. This particular November day Rifkin had a specific

reason for his visit. He wanted to get a glance at that paper.

Arriving in the wire room, he took some notes on operating procedures,

supposedly to make sure the backup system would mesh properly with the

regular systems. Meanwhile, he surreptitiously read the security code from the

posted slip of paper, and memorized it. A few minutes later he walked out. As he

said afterward, he felt as if he had just won the lottery.

There's This Swiss Bank Account...

Leaving the room at about 3 o'clock in the afternoon, he headed straight for the

pay phone in the building's marble lobby, where he deposited a coin and dialed

into the wire-transfer room. He then changed hats, transforming himself from

Stanley Rifkin, bank consultant, into Mike Hansen, a member of the bank's

International Department.

According to one source, the conversation went something like this:

"Hi, this is Mike Hansen in International," he said to the young woman who

answered the phone.

She asked for the office number. That was standard procedure, and he was

prepared: "286" he said.

The girl then asked, "Okay, what's the code?"

Rifkin has said that his adrenaline-powered heartbeat "picked up its pace" at this

point. He responded smoothly, "4789." Then he went on to give instructions for

wiring "Ten million, two-hundred thousand dollars exactly" to the Irving Trust

Company in New York, for credit of the Wozchod Handels Bank of Zurich,

Switzerland, where he had already established an account.

The girl then said, "Okay, I got that. And now I need the interoffice settlement

number."

Rifkin broke out in a sweat; this was a question he hadn't anticipated, something

that had slipped through the cracks in his research. But he managed to stay in

character, acted as if everything was fine, and on the spot answered without

missing a beat, "Let me check; I'll call you right back." He changed hats once

again to call another department at the bank, this time claiming to be an employee

in the wire-transfer room. He obtained the settlement number and called the girl

back.

She took the number and said, "Thanks." (Under the circumstances, her thanking

him has to be considered highly ironic.).Achieving Closure

A few days later Rifkin flew to Switzerland, picked up his cash, and handed over

$8 million to a Russian agency for a pile of diamonds. He flew back, passing

through U.S. Customs with the stones hidden in a money belt. He had pulled off

the biggest bank heist in history--and done it without using a gun, even without a

computer. Oddly, his caper eventually made it into the pages of the Guinness

Book of World Records in the category of "biggest computer fraud."

Stanley Rifkin had used the art of deception--the skills and techniques that are

today called social engineering. Thorough planning and a good gift of gab is all it

really took.

And that's what this book is about--the techniques of social engineering (at which

yours truly is proficient) and how to defend against their being used at your

company.

THE NATURE OF THE THREAT

The Rifkin story makes perfectly clear how misleading our sense of security can

be. Incidents like this - okay, maybe not $10 million heists, but harmful incidents

nonetheless - are happening every day. You may be losing money right now, or

somebody may be stealing new product plans, and you don't even know it. If it

hasn't already happened to your company, it's not a question of if it will happen,

but when.

A Growing Concern

The Computer Security Institute, in its 2001 survey of computer crime, reported

that 85 percent of responding organizations had detected computer security

breaches in the preceding twelve months. That's an astounding number: Only

fifteen out of every hundred organizations responding were able to say that they

had not had a security breach during the year. Equally astounding was the

number of organizations that reported that they had experienced financial losses

due to computer breaches: 64 percent. Well over half the organizations had

suffered financially. In a single year.

My own experiences lead me to believe that the numbers in reports like this are

somewhat inflated. I'm suspicious of the agenda of the people conducting the

survey. But that's not to say that the damage isn't extensive; it is. Those who fail

to plan for a security incident are planning for failure.

Commercial security products deployed in most companies are mainly aimed at

providing protection against the amateur computer intruder, like the youngsters

known as script kiddies. In fact, these wannabe hackers with downloaded

software are mostly just a nuisance. The greater losses, the real threats, come

from sophisticated attackers with well-defined targets who are motivated by.financial gain. These people focus on one target at a time rather than, like the

amateurs, trying to infiltrate as many systems as possible. While amateur

computer intruders simply go for quantity, the professionals target information of

quality and value.

Technologies like authentication devices (for proving identity), access control

(for managing access to files and system resources), and intrusion detection

systems (the electronic equivalent of burglar alarms) are necessary to a corporate

security program. Yet it's typical today for a company to spend more money on

coffee than on deploying countermeasures to protect the organization against

security attacks.

Just as the criminal mind cannot resist temptation, the hacker mind is driven to

find ways around powerful security technology safeguards. And in many cases,

they do that by targeting the people who use the technology.

Deceptive Practices

There's a popular saying that a secure computer is one that's turned off. Clever,

but false: The pretexter simply talks someone into going into the office and

turning that computer on. An adversary who wants your information can obtain

it, usually in any one of several different ways. It's just a matter of time, patience,

personality, and persistence. That's where the art of deception comes in.

To defeat security measures, an attacker, intruder, or social engineer must find a

way to deceive a trusted user into revealing information, or trick an unsuspecting

mark into providing him with access. When trusted employees are deceived,

influenced, or manipulated into revealing sensitive information, or performing

actions that create a security hole for the attacker to slip through, no technology

in the world can protect a business. Just as cryptanalysts are sometimes able to

reveal the plain text of a coded message by finding a weakness that lets them

bypass the encryption technology, social engineers use deception practiced on

your employees to bypass security technology.

ABUSE OF TRUST

In most cases, successful social engineers have strong people skills. They're

charming, polite, and easy to like--social traits needed for establishing rapid

rapport and trust. An experienced social engineer is able to gain access to

virtually any targeted information by using the strategies and tactics of his craft.

Savvy technologists have painstakingly developed information-security solutions

to minimize the risks connected with the use of computers, yet left unaddressed

the most significant vulnerability, the human factor. Despite our intellect, we.humans - you, me, and everyone else - remain the most severe threat to each

other's security.

Our National Character

We're not mindful of the threat, especially in the Western world. In the United

States most of all, we're not trained to be suspicious of each other. We are taught

to "love thy neighbor" and have trust and faith in each other. Consider how

difficult it is for neighborhood watch organizations to get people to lock their

homes and cars. This sort of vulnerability is obvious, and yet it seems to be

ignored by many who prefer to live in a dream world - until they get burned.

We know that all people are not kind and honest, but too often we live as if they

were. This lovely innocence has been the fabric of the lives of Americans and it's

painful to give it up. As a nation we have built into our concept of freedom that

the best places to live are those where locks and keys are the least necessary.

Most people go on the assumption that they will not be deceived by others, based

upon a belief that the probability of being deceived is very low; the attacker,

understanding this common belief, makes his request sound so reasonable that it

raises no suspicion, all the while exploiting the victim's trust.

Organizational Innocence

That innocence that is part of our national character was evident back when

computers were first being connected remotely. Recall that the ARPANet (the

Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), the

predecessor of the Internet, was designed as a way of sharing research

information between government, research, and educational institutions. The goal

was information freedom, as well as technological advancement. Many

educational institutions therefore set up early computer systems with little or no

security. One noted software libertarian, Richard Stallman, even refused to

protect his account with a password.

But with the Internet being used for electronic commerce, the dangers of weak

security in our wired world have changed dramatically. Deploying more

technology is not going to solve the human security problem.

Just look at our airports today. Security has become paramount, yet we're alarmed

by media reports of travelers who have been able to circumvent security and

carry potential weapons past checkpoints. How is this possible during a time

when our airports are on such a state of alert? Are the metal detectors failing? No.

The problem isn't the machines. The problem is the human factor: The people

manning the machines. Airport officials can marshal the National Guard and.install metal detectors and facial recognition systems, but educating the frontline

security staff on how to properly screen passengers is much more likely to help.

The same problem exists within government, business, and educational

institutions throughout the world. Despite the efforts of security professionals,

information everywhere remains vulnerable and will continue to be seen as a ripe

target by attackers with social engineering skills, until the weakest link in the

security chain, the human link, has been strengthened.

Now more than ever we must learn to stop wishful thinking and become more

aware of the techniques that are being used by those who attempt to attack the

confidentiality, integrity, and availability of our computer systems and networks.

We've come to accept the need for defensive driving; it's time to accept and learn

the practice of defensive computing.

The threat of a break-in that violates your privacy, your mind, or your company's

information systems may not seem real until it happens. To avoid such a costly

dose of reality, we all need to become aware, educated, vigilant, and aggressively

protective of our information assets, our own personal information, and our

nation's critical infrastructures. And we must implement those precautions today.

TERRORISTS AND DECEPTION

Of course, deception isn't an exclusive tool of the social engineer. Physical

terrorism makes the biggest news, and we have come to realize as never before

that the world is a dangerous place. Civilization is, after all, just a thin veneer.

The attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., in September 2001 infused

sadness and fear into the hearts of every one of us - not just Americans, but well-meaning

people of all nations. We're now alerted to the fact that there are

obsessive terrorists located around the globe, well - trained and waiting to launch

further attacks against us.

The recently intensified effort by our government has increased the levels of our

security consciousness. We need to stay alert, on guard against all forms of

terrorism. We need to understand how terrorists treacherously create false

identities, assume roles as students and neighbors, and melt into the crowd.

They mask their true beliefs while they plot against us - practicing tricks of

deception similar to those you will read about in these pages.

And while, to the best of my knowledge, terrorists have not yet used social

engineering ruses to infiltrate corporations, water-treatment plants, electrical

generation facilities, or other vital components of our national infrastructure, the

potential is there. It's just too easy. The security awareness and security policies.that I hope will be put into place and enforced by corporate senior management

because of this book will come none too soon.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Corporate security is a question of balance. Too little security leaves your

company vulnerable, but an overemphasis on security gets in the way of

attending to business, inhibiting the company's growth and prosperity. The

challenge is to achieve a balance between security and productivity.

Other books on corporate security focus on hardware and software technology,

and do not adequately cover the most serious threat of all: human deception. The

purpose of this book, in contrast, is to help you understand how you, your co-workers,

and others in your company are being manipulated, and the barriers you

can erect to stop being victims. The book focuses mainly on the non-technical

methods that hostile intruders use to steal information, compromise the integrity

of information that is believed to be safe but isn't., or destroy company work

product.

My task is made more difficult by a simple truth: Every reader will have been

manipulated by the grand experts of all time in social engineering - their parents.

They found ways to get you - "for your own good" - to do

what they thought best. Parents become great storytellers in the same way that

social engineers skillfully develop very plausible stories, reasons, and

justifications for achieving their goals. Yes, we were all molded by our parents:

benevolent (and sometimes not so benevolent) social engineers.

Conditioned by that training, we have become vulnerable to manipulation. We

would live a difficult life if we had to be always on our guard, mistrustful of

others, concerned that we might become the dupe of someone trying to take

advantage of us. In a perfect world we would implicitly trust others, confident

that the people we encounter are going to be honest and trustworthy. But we do

not live in a perfect world, and so we have to exercise a standard of vigilance to

repel the deceptive efforts of our adversaries.

The main portions of this book, Parts 2 and 3, are made up of stories that show

you social engineers in action. In these sections you'll read about:

• What phone phreaks discovered years ago: A slick method for getting an

unlisted phone number from the telephone company.

• Several different methods used by attackers to convince even alert, suspicious

employees to reveal their computer usernames and passwords.

• How an Operations Center manager cooperated in allowing an attacker to

steal his company's most secret product information..• The methods of an attacker who deceived a lady into downloading software

that spies on every keystroke she makes and emails the details to him.

• How private investigators get information about your company, and about you

personally, that I can practically guarantee will send a chill up your spine.

You might think as you read some of the stories in Parts 2 and 3 that they're not

possible, that no one could really succeed in getting away with the lies, dirty

tricks, and schemes de, scribed in these pages. The reality is that in every case,

these stories depict events that can and do happen; many of them are happening

every day somewhere on the planet, maybe even to your business as you read this

book.

The material in this book will be a real eye-opener when it comes to protecting

your business, but also personally deflecting the advances of a social engineer to

protect the integrity of information in your private life.

In Part 4 of this book I switch gears. My goal here is to help you create the

necessary business policies and awareness training to minimize the chances of

your employees ever being duped by a social engineer. Understanding the

strategies, methods, and tactics of the social engineer will help prepare you to

deploy reasonable controls to safeguard your IT assets, without undermining your

company's productivity.

In short, I've written this book to raise your awareness about the serious threat

posed by social engineering, and to help you make sure that your company and its

employees are less likely to be exploited in this way.

Or perhaps I should say, far less likely to be exploited ever again..Part 2

The Art Of The Attacker.Chapter 2

When Innocuous Information Isn't

What do most people think is the real threat from social engineers? What should

you do to be on your guard?

If the goal is to capture some highly valuable prize--say, a vital component of the

company's intellectual capital - then perhaps what's needed is, figuratively, just a

stronger vault and more heavily armed guards. Right?

But in reality penetrating a company's security often starts with the bad guy

obtaining some piece of information or some document that seems so innocent,

so everyday and unimportant, that most people in the organization wouldn't see

any reason why the item should be protected and restricted

HIDDEN VALUE OF INFORMATION

Much of the seemingly innocuous information in a company's possession is

prized

by a social engineering attacker because it can play a vital role in his effort to

dress himself in a cloak of believability.

Throughout these pages, I'm going to show you how social engineers do what

they do by letting you "witness" the attacks for yourself--sometimes presenting

the action from the viewpoint of the people being victimized, allowing you to put

yourself in their shoes and gauge how you yourself (or maybe one of your

employees or co-workers) might have responded. In many cases you'll also

experience the same events from the perspective of the social engineer.

The first story looks at a vulnerability in the financial industry.

CREDITCHEX

For a long time, the British put up with a very stuffy banking system. As an

ordinary, upstanding citizen, you couldn't walk in off the street and open a bank

account. No, the bank wouldn't consider accepting you as a customer unless some

person already well established as a customer provided you with a letter of

recommendation.

Quite a difference, of course, in the seemingly egalitarian banking world of

today. And our modern ease of doing business is nowhere more in evidence than

in friendly, democratic America, where almost anyone can walk into a bank and

easily open a checking account, right? Well, not exactly. The truth is that banks

understandably have a natural reluctance to open. an account for somebody who.just might have a history of writing bad checks--that would be about as welcome

as a rap sheet of bank robbery or embezzlement charges. So it's standard practice

at many banks to get a quick thumbs-up or thumbs-down on a prospective new

customer.

One of the major companies that banks contract with for this information is an

outfit we'll call CreditChex. They provide a valuable service to their clients, but

like many companies, can also unknowingly provide a handy service to knowing

social engineers.

The First Call: Kim Andrews

"National Bank, this is Kim. Did you want to open an account today?"

"Hi, Kim. I have a question for you. Do you guys use CreditChex?"

"Yes."

"When you phone in to CreditChex, what do you call the number you give them--

is it a 'Merchant ID'?"

A pause; she was weighing the question, wondering what this was about and

whether she should answer.

The caller quickly continued without missing a beat:

"Because, Kim, I'm working on a book. It deals with private investigations."

"Yes," she said, answering the question with new confidence, pleased to be

helping a writer.

"So it's called a Merchant ID, right?"

"Uh huh."

"Okay, great. Because I wanted to male sure I had the lingo right. For the book.

Thanks for your help. Good-bye, Kim."

The Second Call: Chris Talbert

"National Bank, New Accounts, this is Chris."

"Hi, Chris. This is Alex," the caller said. "I'm a customer service rep with

CreditChex. We're doing a survey to improve our services. Can you spare me a

couple of minutes?"

She was glad to, and the caller went on:

"Okay - what are the hours your branch is open for business?" She answered, and

continued answering his string of questions.

"How many employees at your branch use our service?"

"How often do you call us with an inquiry?"."Which of our 800-numbers have we assigned you for calling us?"

"Have our representatives always been courteous?"

"How's our response time?"

"How long have you been with the bank?"

"What Merchant ID are you currently using?"

"Have you ever found any inaccuracies with the information we've provided

you?"

"If you had any suggestions for improving our service, what would they be?"

And:

"Would you be willing to fill out periodic questionnaires if we send them to your

branch?"

She agreed, they chatted a bit, the caller rang off, and Chris went back to work.

The Third Call: Henry McKinsey

"CreditChex, this is Henry McKinsey, how can I help you?"

The caller said he was from National Bank. He gave the proper Merchant ID and

then gave the name and social security number of the person he was looking for

information on. Henry asked for the birth date, and the caller gave that, too.

After a few moments, Henry read the listing from his computer screen.

"Wells Fargo reported NSF in 1998, one time, amount of $2,066." NSF - non

sufficient funds - is the familiar banking lingo for checks that have been written

when there isn't enough money in the account to cover them.

"Any activities since then?"

"No activities."

"Have there been any other inquiries?"

"Let's see. Okay, two of them, both last month. Third United Credit Union of

Chicago." He stumbled over the next name, Schenectady Mutual Investments,

and had to spell it. "That's in New York State," he added.

Private Investigator at Work

All three of those calls were made by the same person: a private investigator we'll

call Oscar Grace. Grace had a new client, one of his first. A cop until a few

months before, he found that some of this new work came naturally, but some

offered a challenge to his resources and inventiveness. This one came down

firmly in the challenge category..The hardboiled private eyes of fiction - the Sam Spades and the Philip Marlowes

- spend long night time hours sitting in cars waiting to catch a cheating spouse.

Real-life PIs do the same. They also do a less written about, but no less important

kind of snooping for warring spouses, a method that leans more heavily on social

engineering skills than on fighting off the boredom of night time vigils.

Grace's new client was a lady who looked as if she had a pretty comfortable

budget for clothes and jewelry. She walked into his office one day and took a seat

in the leather chair, the only one that didn't have papers piled on it. She settled

her large Gucci handbag on his desk with the logo turned to face him and

announced she was planning to tell her husband that she wanted a divorce, but

admitted to "just a very little problem."

It seemed her hubby was one step ahead. He had already pulled the cash out of

their savings account and an even larger sum from their brokerage account. She

wanted to know where their assets had been squirreled away, and her divorce

lawyer wasn't any help at all. Grace surmised the lawyer was one of those

uptown, high-rise counselors who wouldn't get his hands dirty on something

messy like where did the money go.

Could Grace help?

He assured her it would be a breeze, quoted a fee, expenses billed at cost, and

collected a check for the first payment.

Then he faced his problem. What do you do if you've never handled a piece of

work like this before and don't quite know how to go about tracking down a

money trail? You move forward by baby steps. Here, accord- mg to our source, is

Grace's story.

I knew about CreditChex and how banks used the outfit - my ex-wife used to

work at a bank. But I didn't know the lingo and procedures, and trying to ask my

ex- would be a waste of time.

Step one: Get the terminology straight and figure out how to make the request so

it sounds like I know what I'm talking about. At the bank I called, the first young

lady, Kim, was suspicious when I asked about how they identify themselves

when they phone CreditChex. She hesitated; she didn't know whether to tell me.

Was I put off by that? Not a bit. In fact, the hesitation gave me an important clue,

a sign that I had to supply a reason she'd find believable. When I worked the con

on her about doing research for a book, it relieved her suspicions. You say you're

an author or a movie writer, and everybody opens up..She had other knowledge that would have helped - things like what reformation

CreditChex requires to identify the person you're calling about, what information

you can ask for, and the big one, what was Kim's bank Merchant ID number. I

was ready to ask those questions, but her hesitation sent up the red flag. She

bought the book research story, but she already had a few niggling suspicions. If

she'd been more willing right way, I would have asked her to reveal more details

about their procedures.

LINGO

MARK: The victim of a con.

BURN THE SOURCE: An attacker is said to have burned the source when he

allows a victim to recognize that an attack has taken place. Once the victim

becomes aware and notifies other employees or management of the attempt, it

becomes extremely difficult to exploit the same source in future attacks.

You have to go on gut instinct, listen closely to what the mark is saying and how

she's saying it. This lady sounded smart enough for alarm bells to start going off

if I asked too many unusual questions. And even though she didn't know who I

was or what number I was calling from, still in this

business you never want anybody putting out the word to be on the look out for

someone calling to get information about the business. That's because you don't

want to burn the source - you may want to call same office back another time.

I'm always on the watch for little signs that give me a read on how cooperative a

person is, on a scale that runs from "You sound like a nice person and I believe

everything you're saying" to "Call the cops, alert the National Guard, this guy's

up to no good."

I read Kim as a little bit on edge, so I just called somebody at a different branch.

On my second call with Chris, the survey trick played like a charm. The tactic

here is to slip the important questions in among inconsequential ones that are

used to create a sense of believability. Before I dropped the question about the

Merchant ID number with CreditChex, I ran a little last-minute test by asking her

a personal question about how long she'd been with the bank.

A personal question is like a land mine - some people step right over it and never

notice; for other people, it blows up and sends them scurrying for safety. So if I

ask a personal question and she answers the question and the tone of her voice

doesn't change, that means she probably isn't skeptical about the nature of the

request. I can safely ask the sought after question without arousing her

suspicions, and she'll probably give me the answer I'm looking for..One more thing a good PI knows: Never end the conversation after getting the

key information. Another two or three questions, a little chat, and then it's okay to

say good-bye. Later, if the victim remembers anything about what you asked, it

will probably be the last couple of questions. The rest will usually be forgotten.

So Chris gave me their Merchant ID number, and the phone number they call to

make requests. I would have been happier if I had gotten to ask some questions

about how much information you can get from CreditChex. But it was better not

to push my luck.

It was like having a blank check on CreditChex. I could now call and get

information whenever I wanted. I didn't even have to pay for the service. As it

turned out, the CreditChex rep was happy to share exactly the information I

wanted: two places my client's husband had recently applied to open an account.

So where were the assets his soon-to-be ex-wife was looking for? Where else but

at the banking institutions the guy at CreditChex listed?

Analyzing the Con

This entire ruse was based on one of the fundamental tactics of social

engineering: gaining access to information that a company employee treats as

innocuous, when it isn't.

The first bank clerk confirmed the terminology to describe the identifying

number used when calling CreditChex: the Merchant ID. The second provided

the phone number for calling CreditChex, and the most vital piece of information,

the bank's Merchant ID number. All this information appeared to the clerk to be

innocuous. After all, the bank clerk thought she was talking to someone from

CreditChex -so what could be the harm in disclosing the number?

All of this laid the groundwork for the third call. Grace had everything he needed

to phone CreditChex, pass himself off as a rep from one of their customer banks,

National, and simply ask for the information he was after.

With as much skill at stealing information as a good swindler has at stealing your

money, Grace had well-honed talents for reading people. He knew the common

tactic of burying the key questions among innocent ones. He knew a personal

question would test the second clerk's willingness to cooperate, before innocently

asking for the Merchant ID number.

The first clerk's error in confirming the terminology for the CreditChex ID

number would be almost impossible to protect against. The information is so

widely known within the banking industry that it appears to be unimportant - the

very model of the innocuous. But the second clerk, Chris, should not have been.so willing to answer questions without positively verifying that the caller was

really who he claimed to be. She should, at the very least, have taken his name

and number and called back; that way, if any questions arose later, she may have

kept a record of what phone number the person had used. In this case, making a

call like that would have made it much more difficult for the attacker to

masquerade as a representative from CreditChex.

MITNICK MESSAGE

A Merchant ID in this situation is analogous to a password. If bank personnel

treated it like an ATM PIN, they might appreciate the sensitive nature of the

information. Is there an internal code or number in your organization that people

aren't treating with enough care?

Better still would have been a call to CreditChex using a nun bank already had on

record - not a number provided by the caller - to verify that the person really

worked there, and that the company was really doing a customer survey. Given

the practicalities of the real world and the time pressures that most people work

under today, though, this kind of verification phone call is a lot to expect, except

when an employee is suspicious that some kind of attack is being made.

THE ENGINEER TRAP

It is widely known that head-hunter firms use social engineering to recruit

corporate talent. Here's an example of how it can happen.

In the late 1990s, a not very ethical employment agency signed a new client, a

company looking for electrical engineers with experience in the telephone

industry. The honcho on the project was a lady endowed with a throaty voice and

sexy manner that she had learned to use to develop initial trust and rapport over

the phone.

The lady decided to stage a raid on a cellular phone service provider to see if she

could locate some engineers who might be tempted to walk across the street to a

competitor. She couldn't exactly call the switch board and say, "Let me talk to

anybody with five years of engineering experience." Instead, for reasons that will

become clear in a moment, she began the talent assault by seeking a piece of

information that appeared to have no sensitivity at all, information that company

people give out to almost anybody who asks.

The First Call: The receptionist

The attacker, using the name Didi Sands, placed a call to the corporate offices of

the cellular phone service. In part, the conversation went like this:.Receptionist: Good afternoon. This is Marie, how may I help you?

Didi: Can you connect me to the Transportation Department?

R: I'm not sure if we have one, I'll look in my directory. Who's calling?

D: It's Didi.

R: Are you in the building, or... ?

D: No, I'm outside the building.

R: Didi who?

D: Didi Sands. I had the extension for Transportation, but I forgot what it was.

R: One moment.

To allay suspicions, at this point Didi asked a casual, just making conversation

question designed to establish that she was on the "inside," familiar with

company locations.

D: What building are you in - Lakeview or Main Place?

R: Main Place. (pause) It's 805 555 6469.

To provide herself with a backup in case the call to Transportation didn't provide

what she was looking for, Didi said she also wanted to talk to Real Estate. The

receptionist gave her that number, as well. When Didi asked to be connected to

the Transportation number, the receptionist tried, but the line was busy.

At that point Didi asked for a third phone number, for Accounts Receivable,

located at a corporate facility in Austin, Texas. The receptionist asked her to wait

a moment, and went off the line. Reporting to Security that she had a suspicious

phone call and thought there was something fishy going on? Not at all, and Didi

didn't have the least bit of concern. She was being a bit of a nuisance, but to the

receptionist it was all part of a typical workday. After about a minute, the

receptionist came back on the line, looked up the Accounts Receivable number,

tried it, and put Didi through.

The Second Call: Peggy

The next conversation went like this:

Peggy: Accounts Receivable, Peggy.

Didi: Hi, Peggy. This is Didi, in Thousand Oaks.

P: Hi, Didi.

D: How ya doing?

P: Fine..Didi then used a familiar term in the corporate world that describes the charge

code for assigning expenses against the budget of a specific organization or

workgroup:

D: Excellent. I have a question for you. How do I find out the cost center for a

particular department?

P: You'd have to get a hold of the budget analyst for the department.

D: Do you know who'd be the budget analyst for

Thousand Oaks - headquarters? I'm trying to fill out a

form and I don't know the proper cost center.

P: I just know when y'all need a cost center number, you call your budget

analyst.

D: Do you have a cost center for your department there in Texas?

P: We have our own cost center but they don't give us a complete list of them.

D: How many digits is the cost center? FOr example, what's your cost center?

P: Well, like, are you with 9WC or with SAT?

Didi had no idea what departments or groups these referred to, but it didn't

matter. She answered:

D: 9WC.

P: Then it's usually four digits. Who did you say you were with?

D: Headquarters--Thousand Oaks.

P: Well, here's one for Thousand Oaks. It's 1A5N, that's N like in Nancy.

By just hanging out long enough with somebody willing to be helpful, Didi had

the cost center number she needed - one of those pieces of information that no

one thinks to protect because it seems like something that couldn't be of any

value to an outsider.

The Third Call: A Helpful Wrong Number

Didi's next step would be to parlay the cost center number into something of real

value by using it as a poker chip.

She began by calling the Real Estate department, pretending she had reached a

wrong number. Starting with a "Sorry to bother you, but .... " she claimed she was

an employee who had lost her company directory, and asked who you were

supposed to call to get a new copy. The man said the print copy was out of date

because it was available on the company intranet site.

Didi said she preferred using a hard copy, and the man told her to call

Publications, and then, without being asked - maybe just to keep the sexy-.sounding lady on the phone a little longer - helpfully looked up the number and

gave it to her.

The Fourth Call: Bart in Publications

In Publications, she spoke with a man named Bart. Didi said she was from

Thousand Oaks, and they had a new consultant who needed a copy of the

company directory. She told him a print copy would work better for the

consultant, even if it was somewhat out of date. Bart told her she'd have to fill out

a requisition form and send the form over to him.

Didi said she was out of forms and it was a rush, and could Bart be a sweetheart

and fill out the form for her? He agreed with a little too much enthusiasm, and

Didi gave him the details. For the address of the fictional contractor, she drawled

the number of what social engineers call a mail drop, in this case a Mail Boxes

Etc.-type of commercial business where her company rented boxes for situations

just like this.

The earlier spadework now came in handy: There would be a charge for the cost

and shipping of the directory. Fine - Didi gave the cost center for Thousand Oaks:

"IA5N, that's N like in Nancy."

A few days later, when the corporate directory arrived, Didi found it was an even

bigger payoff than she had expected: It not only listed the names and phone

numbers, but also showed who worked for whom - the corporate structure of the

whole organization.

The lady of the husky voice was ready to start making her head-hunter, people-raiding

phone calls. She had conned the information she needed to launch her

raid using the gift of gab honed to a high polish by every skilled social engineer.

Now she was ready for the payoff.

LINGO

MAIL DROP: The social engineer's term for a rental mailbox, typically rented

under an assumed name, which is used to deliver documents or packages the

victim has been duped into sending

MITNICK MESSAGE

Just like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, each piece of information may be irrelevant by

itself. However, when the pieces are put together, a clear picture emerges. In this.I case, the picture the social engineer saw was the entire internal structure of the

company .

Analyzing the Con

In this social engineering attack, Didi started by getting phone numbers for three

departments in the target company. This was easy, because the numbers she was

asking for were no secret, especially to employees. A social engineer learns to

sound like an insider, and Didi was skilled at this

game. One of the phone numbers led her to a cost center number, which she then

used to obtain a copy of the firm's employee directory.

The main tools she needed: sounding friendly, using some corporate lingo, and,

with the last victim, throwing in a little verbal eyelash-batting.

And one more tool, an essential element not easily acquired - the manipulative

skills of the social engineer, refined through extensive practice and the unwritten

lessons of bygone generations of confidence men.

MORE "WORTHLESS" INFO

Besides a cost center number and internal phone extensions, what other

seemingly useless information can be extremely valuable to your enemy?.

Peter Abel's Phone Call

"Hi," the voice at the other end of the line says. "This is Tom at Parkhurst Travel.

Your tickets to San Francisco are ready. Do you want us to deliver them, or do

you want to pick them up?"

"San Francisco?" Peter says. "I'm not going to San Francisco." "Is this Peter

Abels?"

"Yes, but I don't have any trips coming up."

"Well," the caller says with a friendly laugh, "you sure you don't want to go to

San Francisco?"

"If you think you can talk my boss into it..." Peter says, playing along with the

friendly conversation.

"Sounds like a mix-up," the caller says. "On our system, we book travel

arrangements under the employee number. Maybe somebody used the wrong

number. What's your employee number?"

Peter obligingly recites his number. And why not? It goes on just about every

personnel form he fills out, lots of people in the company have access to it -

human resources, payroll, and, obviously, the outside travel agency. No one treats

an employee number like some sort of secret. What difference could it make?

The answer isn't hard to figure out. Two or three pieces of information might be

all it takes to mount an effective impersonation - the social engineer cloaking

himself in someone else's identity. Get hold of an employee's name, his phone.number, his employee number--and maybe, for good measure, his manager's

name and phone number--and a halfway- competent social engineer is equipped

with most of what he's likely to need to sound authentic to the next target he

calls.

If someone who said he was from another department in your company had

called yesterday, given a plausible reason, and asked for your employee number,

would you have had any reluctance in giving it to him?

And by the way, what is your social security number?

MITNICK MESSAGE

The moral of the story is, don't give out any personal or internal company

information or identifiers to anyone, unless his or her voice is recognizable and

the requestor has a need to know.

PREVENTING THE CON

Your company has a responsibility to make employees aware of how a serious

mistake can occur from mishandling non public information. A well thought-out

information security policy, combined with proper education and training, will

dramatically increase employee awareness about the proper handling of corporate

business information. A data classification policy will help you to implement

proper controls with respect to disclosing information. Without a data

classification policy, all internal information must be considered confidential,

unless otherwise specified.

Take these steps to protect your company from the release of seemingly

innocuous information:

The Information Security Department needs to conduct awareness training

detailing the methods used by social engineers. One method, as described above,

is to obtain seemingly non sensitive information and use it as a poker chip to gain

short-term trust. Each and every employee needs to be aware that when a caller

has knowledge about company procedures, lingo, and internal identifiers it does

not in any way, shape, or form authenticate the requestor or authorize him or her

as having a need to know. A caller could be a former employee or contractor with

the requisite insider information. Accordingly, each corporation has a

responsibility to determine the appropriate authentication method to be used

when employees interact with people they don't recognize in person or over the

telephone.

The person or persons with the role and responsibility of drafting a data

classification policy should examine the types of details that may be used to gain.access for legitimate employees that seem innocuous, but could lead to

information that is, sensitive. Though you'd never give out the access codes for

your ATM card, would you tell somebody what server you use to develop

company software products? Could that information be used by a person

pretending to be somebody who has legitimate access to the corporate network?

Sometimes just knowing inside terminology can make the social engineer appear

authoritative and knowledgeable. The attacker often relies on this common

misconception to dupe his or her victims into compliance. For example, a

Merchant ID is an identifier that people in the New Accounts department of a

bank casually use every day. But such an identifier exactly the same as a

password. If each and every employee understands the nature of this identifier -

that it is used to positively authenticate a requestor--they might treat it with more

respect.

MITNICK MESSAGE

As the old adage goes - even real paranoids probably have enemies. We must

assume that every business has its enemies, too - attackers that target the network

infrastructure to compromise business secrets. Don't end up being a statistic on

computer crime - it's high time to shore up the necessary defenses by

implementing proper controls through well-thought-out security policies and

procedures.

No companies - well, very few, at least - give out the direct dial phone numbers

of their CEO or board chairman. Most companies, though, have no concern about

giving out phone numbers to most departments and workgroups in the,

organization - especially to someone who is, or appears to be, an employee. A

possible countermeasure: Implement a policy that prohibits giving internal phone

numbers of employees, contractors, consultants, and temps to outsiders. More

importantly, develop a step-by-step procedure to positively identify whether a

caller asking for phone numbers is really an employee.

Accounting codes for workgroups and departments, as well as copies of the

corporate directory (whether hard copy, data file, or electronic phone book on the

intranet) are frequent targets of social engineers. Every company needs a written,

well-publicized policy on disclosure of this type of information. The safeguards

should include maintaining an audit log that records instances when sensitive

information is disclosed to people outside of the company.

Information such as an employee number, by itself, should not be used as any

sort of authentication. Every employee must be trained to verify not just the

identity of a requestor, but also the requestor's need to know..In your security training, consider teaching employees this approach: Whenever

asked a question or asked for a favor by a stranger, learn first to politely decline

until the request can be verified. Then - before giving in to the natural desire to be

Mr. or Ms. Helpful - follow company policies and procedures with respect to

verification and disclosure of non public information. This style may go against

our natural tendency to help others, but a little healthy paranoia may be necessary

to avoid being the social engineer's next dupe.

As the stories in this chapter have shown, seemingly innocuous information can

be the key to your company's most prized secrets..Chapter 3

The Direct Attack: Just Asking for It

Many social engineering attacks are intricate, involving a number of steps and

elaborate planning, combining a mix of manipulation and technological know-how.

But I always find it striking that a skillful social engineer can often achieve his

goal with a simple, straightforward, direct attack. Just asking outright for the

information may be all that's needed - as you'll see.

AN MLAC QUICKIE

Want to know someone's unlisted phone number? A social engineer can tell you

half a dozen ways (and you'll find some of them described in other stories in

these pages), but probably the simplest scenario is one that uses a single phone

call, like this one.

Number, Please

The attacker dialed the private phone company number for the MLAC, the

Mechanized Line Assignment Center. To the woman who answered, he said:

"Hey, this is Paul Anthony. I'm a cable splicer. Listen, a terminal box out here got

fried in a fire. Cops think some creep tried to burn his own house down for the

insurance. They got me out here alone trying to rewire this entire two hundred-pair

terminal. I could really use some help right now. What facilities should be

working at 6723 South Main?"

In other parts of the phone company, the person called would know that reverse

lookup information on non pub (non published) numbers is supposed to be given

out only to authorized phone company MLAC is supposed to be known only to

company employees. And while they'd never give out information to the public,

who would want to refuse a little help to a company man coping with that heavy-duty

assignment?. She feels sorry for him, she's had bad days on the job herself,

and she'll

bend the rules a little to help out a fellow employee with a problem. She gives

him the cable and pairs and each working number assigned to the address.

MITNICK MESSAGE

It's human nature to trust our fellow man, especially when the request meets the

test of being reasonable. Social engineers use this knowledge to exploit their

victims and to achieve their goals..Analyzing the Con

As you'll notice repeatedly in these stories, knowledge of a company's lingo, and

of its corporate structure - its various offices and departments what each does and

what information each has - is part of the essential bag of tricks of the successful

social engineer.

YOUNG MAN ON THE RUN

A man we'll call Frank Parsons had been on the run for years, still wanted by the

federal government for being part of an underground antiwar group in the 1960s.

In restaurants he sat facing the door and he had a way of glancing over his

shoulder every once in a while that other people found disconcerting. He moved

every few years.

At one point Frank landed in a city he didn't know, and set about job hunting. For

someone like Frank, with his well-developed computer skills (and social

engineering skills as well, even ,though he never listed those on a job

application), finding a good job usually wasn't a problem. Except in times when

the economy is very tight, people with good technical computer knowledge

usually find their talents in high demand and they have little problem landing on

their feet. Frank quickly located a well - paying job opportunity at a large,

upscale, long-term care facility near where he was living.

Just the ticket, he thought. But when he started plodding his way through the

application forms, he came upon an uh-oh: The employer required the applicant

to provide a copy of his state criminal history record, which he had to obtain

himself from the state police. The stack of employment papers included a form to

request this document, and the form had a little box for providing a fingerprint.

Even though they were asking for a print of just the right index finger, if they

matched his print with one in the FBI's database, he'd probably soon be working

in food service at a federally funded resort.

On the other hand, it occurred to Frank that maybe, just maybe, he might still be

able to get away with this. Perhaps the state didn't send those fingerprint samples

to the FBI at all. How could he find out?

How? He was a social engineer--how do you think he found out? He placed a

phone call to the state patrol: "Hi. We're doing a study for the State Department

of Justice. We're researching the requirements to implement a new fingerprint

identification system. Can I talk to somebody there that's really familiar with

what you're doing who could maybe help us out?".And when the local expert came on the phone, Frank asked a series of questions

about what systems they were using, and the capabilities to search and store

fingerprint data. Had they had any equipment problems? Were they tied into the

National Crime Information Center's (NCIC) Fingerprint Search or just within the

state? Was the equipment pretty easy for everybody to learn to use?

Slyly, he sneaked the key question in among the rest.

The answer was music to his ears: No they weren't tied into the NCIC, they only

checked against the state's Criminal Information Index (CII).

MITNICK MESSGAE

Savvy information swindlers have no qualms about ringing up federal, state, or

local government officials to learn about the procedures of law enforcement.

With such information in hand, the social engineer may be able to circumvent

your company's standard security checks.

That was all Frank needed to know. He didn't have any record in that state, so he

submitted his application, was hired for the job, and nobody ever showed up at

his desk one day with the greeting, "These gentlemen, are from the FBI and

they'd like to have a little talk with you."

And, according to him, he proved to be a model employee.

ON THE DOORSTEP

In spite of the myth of the paperless office, companies continue to print out reams

of paper every day. Information in print at your company may be vulnerable,

even if you use security precautions and stamp it confidential.

Here's one story that shows you how social engineers might obtain your most

secret documents.

Loop-Around Deception

Every year the phone company publishes a volume called the Test Number

Directory (or at least they used to, and because I am still on supervised release,

I'm not going to ask if they still do). This document was highly prized by phone

phreaks because it was packed with a list of all the closely guarded phone

numbers used by company craftsmen, technicians, a others for things like trunk

testing or checking numbers that always ring busy..One of these test numbers, known in the lingo as a loop-around, was particularly

useful. Phone phreaks used it as a way to find other phone phreaks to chat with,

at no cost to them. Phone phreaks also used it a way to create a call back number

to give to, say, a bank. A social engineer would tell somebody at the bank the

phone number to call to reach at his office. When the bank called back to the test

number (loop-around) the phone phreak would be able to receive the call, yet he

had the protection of having used a phone number that could not be traced back

to him.

A Test Number Directory provided a lot of neat information that could be used

by any information-hungry, testosteroned, phone phreak. So when the new

directories were published each year, they were coveted by a lot of youngsters

whose hobby was exploring the telephone network.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Security training with respect to company policy designed to protect information

assets needs to be for everyone in the company, not just any employee who has

electronic or physical access to the company's IT assets.

Stevie's Scam

Naturally phone companies don't make these books easy to get hold of, so phone

phreaks have to be creative to get one. How can they do this? An eager youngster

with a mind bent on acquiring the directory might enact a scenario like this.

Late one day, a mild evening in the southern California autumn, a guy I'll call

him Stevie phones a small telephone company central office, which is the

building from which phone lines run to all the homes and businesses in the

established service area.

When the switchman on duty answers the call, Stevie announces that he's from

the division of the phone company that publishes and distributes printed

materials. "We have your new Test Number Directory," he says. "But for security

reasons, we cant deliver your copy until we pick up the old one. And the delivery

guy is running late. If you wanna leave your copy just outside your door, he can

swing by, pick up yours, drop the new one and be on his way."

The unsuspecting switchman seems to think that sounds reasonable. He does

exactly as asked, putting out on the doorstep of the building his copy of the

directory, its cover clearly marked in big red letters with the "COMPANY

CONFIDENTIAL - WHEN NO LONGER NEEDED THIS DOCUMENT

MUST BE SHREDDED.".Stevie drives by and looks around carefully to spot any cops or phone company

security people who might be lurking behind trees or watching for him from

parked cars. Nobody in sight. He casually picks up the coveted directory and

drives away.

Here's just one more example of how easy it can be for a social engineer to get

what he wants by following the simple principle of "just ask for it."

GAS ATTACK

Not only company assets are at risk in a social engineering scenario. Sometimes

it's a company's customers who are the victims.

Working as a customer-service clerk brings its share of frustrations, its share of

laughs, and its share of innocent mistakes - some of which can have unhappy

consequences for a company's customers.

Janie Acton's Story

Janie Acton had been manning a cubicle as a customer service rep f Hometown

Electric Power, in Washington, D.C., for just over three years. She was

considered to be one of the better clerks, smart and conscientious

It was Thanksgiving week when this one particular call came in. The caller, said,

"This is Eduardo in the Billing Department. I've got a lady on hold, she's a

secretary in the executive offices that works for one of the vice presidents, and

she's asking for some information and I can't use my computer I got an email

from this girl in Human Resources that said 'ILOVEYOU.' and when I opened

the attachment, I couldn't use my machine any more. A virus. I got caught by a

stupid virus. Anyways, could you look up some customer information for me?"

"Sure," Janie answered. "It crashed your computer? That's terrible."

"Yeah."

"How can I help?" Janie asked.

Here the attacker called on information from his advance research to make

himself sound authentic. He had learned that the information he, wanted was

stored in something called the Customer Billing Information System, and he had

found out how employees referred to the system. He asked, "Can you bring up an

account on CBIS?"

"Yes, what's the account number.? "

"I don't have the number; I need you to bring it up by name."

"Okay, what's the name?"

"It's Heather Marning." He spelled the name, and Janie typed it in.."Okay, I have it up."

"Great. Is the account current?"

"Uh huh, it's current."

"What's the account number?" he asked.

"Do you have a pencil?"

"Ready to write."

"Account number BAZ6573NR27Q."

He read the number back and then said, "And what's the service address?"

She gave him the address.

"And what's the phone?"

Janie obligingly read off that information, too.

The caller thanked her, said good-bye, and hung up. Janie went on to the next

call, never thinking further about it.

Art Sealy's Research Project

Art Sealy had given up working as a freelance editor for small publishing houses

when he found he could make more money doing research for writers and

businesses. He soon figured out that the fee he could charge went up in

proportion to how close the assignment took him to the sometimes hazy line

between the legal and the illegal. Without ever realizing it, certainly without ever

giving it a name, Art became a social engineer, using techniques familiar to every

information broker. He turned out to have a native talent for the business,

figuring out for himself techniques that most social engineers had to learn from

others. After a while, he crossed the line without the least twinge of guilt.

A man contacted me who was writing a book about the Cabinet in the Nixon

years, and was looking for a researcher who could get the inside scoop on

William E. Simon, who had been Nixon's Treasury secretary. Mr. Simon had

died, but the author had the name of a woman who had been on his staff. He was

pretty sure she still lived in D.C., but hadn't been able to get an address. She

didn't have a telephone in her name, or at least none that was listed. So that's

when he called me. I told him, sure, no problem.

This is the kind of job you can usually bring off in a phone call or two, if you

know what you're doing. Every local utility company can generally be counted on

to give the information away. Of course, you have to BS a little. But what's a

little white lie now and then - right?

I like to use a different approach each time, just to keep things interesting. "This

is so-and-so in the executive offices" has always worked well for me. So has "I've

got somebody on the line from Vice President Somebody's office," which worked

this time, too..MITNICK MESSAGE

Never think all social engineering attacks need to be elaborate ruses so complex

that they're likely to be recognized before they can be completed. Some are in-

and-out, strike-and-disappear, very simple attacks that are no more than.., well,

just asking for it.

You have to sort of develop the social engineer's instinct, get a sense of how

cooperative the person on the other end is going to be with you. This time I

lucked out with a friendly, helpful lady. In a single phone call, I had the address

and phone number. Mission accomplished.

Analyzing the Con

Certainly Janie knew that customer information is sensitive. She would

never discuss one customer's account with another customer, or give out

private information to the public.

But naturally, for a caller from within the company, different rules apply. For a

fellow employee it's all about being a team player and helping each other get the

job done. The man from Billing could have looked up the details himself if his

computer hadn't been down with a virus, and she was glad to be able to help a co-worker.

Art built up gradually to the key information he was really after, asking

questions along the way about things he didn't really need, such as the

account number. Yet at the same time, the account number information

provided a fallback: If the clerk had become suspicious, he'd call a second time

and stand a better chance of success, because knowing the account number

would make him sound all the more authentic to the next clerk he reached.

It never occurred to Janie that somebody might actually lie about some

thing like this, that the caller might not really be from the billing department at

all. Of course, the blame doesn't lie at Janie's feet. She wasn't well versed in the

rule about making sure you know who you're talking to before discussing

information in a customer's file. Nobody had ever told her about the danger of a

phone call like the one from Art. It wasn't in the company policy, it wasn't part

of her training, and her supervisor had never mentioned it.

PREVENTING THE CON

A point to include in your security training: Just because a caller or visitor knows

the names of some people in the company, or knows some of the corporate lingo

or procedures, doesn't mean he is who he claims to be. And it definitely doesn't.establish him as anybody authorized to be given internal information, or access to

your computer system or network.

Security training needs to emphasize: When in doubt, verify, verify, verify.

In earlier times, access to information within a company was a mark of rank and

privilege. Workers stoked the furnaces, ran the machines, typed the letters, and

filed the reports. The foreman or boss told them what to do, when, and how. It

was the foreman or boss who knew how many widgets each worker should be

producing on a shift, how many and in what colors and sizes the factory needed

to turn out this week, next week, and by the end of the month.

Workers handled machines and tools and materials, and bosses handled

information. Workers needed only the information specific to their specific jobs.

The picture is a little different today, isn't it? Many factory workers use some

form of computer or computer-driven machine. For a large part of the workforce,

critical information is pushed down to the users' desktops so that they can fulfill

their responsibility to get their work done. In today's environment, almost

everything employees do involves the handling of information.

That's why a company's security policy needs to be distributed enterprise-wide,

regardless of position. Everybody must understand that it's not just the bosses and

executives who have the information that an attacker might be after. Today,

workers at every level, even those who don't use a computer, are liable to be

targeted. The newly hired rep in the customer service group may be just the weak

link that a social engineer breaks to achieve his objective.

Security training and corporate security policies need to strengthen that

link..Chapter 4

Building Trust

Some of these stories might lead you to think that I believe everyone in business

is a complete idiot, ready, even eager, to give away every secret in his or her

possession. The social engineer knows isn't true. Why are social engineering

attacks so successful? It isn't because people are stupid or lack common sense.

But we, as human beings are all vulnerable to being deceived because people can

misplace their trust if manipulated in certain ways.

The social engineer anticipates suspicion and resistance, and he's always prepared

to turn distrust into trust. A good social engineer plans his attack like a chess

game, anticipating the questions his target might ask so he can be ready with the

proper answers.

One of his common techniques involves building a sense of trust on the part of

his victims. How does a con man make you trust him? Trust me, he can.

TRUST: THE KEY TO DECEPTION

The more a social engineer can make his contact seem like business as usual, the

more he allays suspicion. When people don't have a reason to be suspicious, it's

easy for a social engineer to gain their trust.

Once he's got your trust, the drawbridge is lowered and the castle door thrown

open so he can enter and take whatever information he wants.

NOTE

You may notice I refer to social engineers, phone phreaks, and con-game

operators as 'he" through most of these stories. This is not chauvinism; it simply

reflects the truth that most practitioners in these fields are male. But though there

aren't many women social engineers, the number is growing. There are enough

female social engineers out there that you shouldn't let your guard down just

because you hear a women's voice. In fact, female social engineers have a

distinct advantage because they can use their sexuality to obtain cooperation.

You'll find a small number of the so-called gentler sex represented in these pages

The First Call: Andrea Lopez

Andrea Lopez answered the phone at the video rental store where she worked,

and in a moment was smiling: It's always a pleasure when a customer takes the

trouble to say he's happy about the service. This caller said he had had a very

good experience dealing with the store, and he wanted to send the manager a

letter about it..He asked for the manager's name and the mailing address, and she told him it was

Tommy Allison, and gave him the address. As he was about to hang up, he had

another idea and said, "I might want to write to your company headquarters, too.

What's your store number?" She gave him that information, as well. He said

thanks, added something pleasant about how helpful she had been, and said

goodbye.

"A call like that," she thought, "always seems to make the shift go by faster. How

nice it would be if people did that more often."

The Second Call: Ginny

"Thanks for calling Studio Video. This is Ginny, how can I help you?"

"Hi, Ginny," the caller said enthusiastically, sounding as if he talked to Ginny

every week or so. "It's Tommy Allison, manager at Forest Park, Store 863. We

have a customer in here who wants to rent Rocky 5 and we're all out of copies.

Can you check on what you've got?"

She came back on the line after a few moments and said, "Yeah, we've got

three copies."

"Okay, I'll see if he wants to drive over there. Listen, thanks. If you ever need any

help from our store, just call and ask for Tommy. I'll be glad to do whatever I can

for you."

Three or four times over the next couple of weeks, Ginny got calls from Tommy

for help with one thing or another. They were seemingly legitimate requests, and

he was always very friendly without sounding like he was trying to come on to

her. He was a little chatty along the way, as well - "Did you hear about the big

fire in Oak Park? Bunch of streets closed over there," and the like. The calls were

a little break from the routine of the day, and Ginny was always glad to hear from

him.

One day Tommy called sounding stressed. He asked, "Have you guys been

having trouble with your computers?"

"No," Ginny answered. "Why?"

"Some guy crashed his car into a telephone pole, and the phone company

repairman says a whole part of the city will lose their phones and Internet

connection till they get this fixed."

"Oh, no. Was the man hurt?"

"They took him away in an ambulance. Anyway, I could use a little help. I've got

a customer of yours here who wants to rent Godfather II and doesn't have his

card with him. Could you verify his information for me?"

"Yeah, sure.".Tommy gave the customer's name and address, and Ginny found him in the

computer. She gave Tommy the account number.

"Any late returns or balance owed?" Tommy asked.

"Nothing showing."

"Okay, great. I'll sign him up by hand for an account here and put it in our

database later on when the computers come back up again. And he wants to put

this charge on the Visa card he uses at your store, and he doesn't have it with him.

What's the card number and expiration date?"

She gave it to him, along with the expiration date. Tommy said, "Hey, thanks for

the help. Talk to you soon," and hung up.

Doyle Lonnegan's Story

Lonnegan is not a young man you would want to find waiting when you open

your front door. A one-time collection man for bad gambling debts, he still does

an occasional favor, if it doesn't put him out very much. In this case, he was

offered a sizable bundle of cash for little more than making some phone calls to

a video store. Sounds easy enough. It's just that none of his "customers" knew

how to run this con; they needed somebody with Lonnegan's talent and know-how.

People don't write checks to cover their bets when they're unlucky or stupid at the

poker table. Everybody knows that. Why did these friends of mine keep on

playing with a cheat that didn't have green out on the table? Don't ask. Maybe

they're a little light in the IQ department. But they're friends of mine--what can

you do?

This guy didn't have the money, so they took a check. I ask you! Should of drove

him to an ATM machine, is what they should of done. But no, a check. For

$3,230.

Naturally, it bounced. What would you expect? So then they call me; can I help?

I don't close doors on people's knuckles any more. Besides, there are better ways

nowadays. I told them, 30 percent commission, I'd see what I could do. So they

give me his name and address, and I go up on the computer to see what's the

closest video store to him. I wasn't in a big hurry. Four phone calls to cozy up to

the store manager, and then, bingo, I've got the cheat's Visa card number.

Another friend of mine owns a topless bar. For fifty bucks, he put the guy's poker

money through as a Visa charge from the bar. Let the cheat explain that to his

wife. You think he might try to tell Visa it's not his charge? Think again. He

knows we know who he is. And if we could get his Visa number, he'll figure we

could get a lot more besides. No worries on that score..Analyzing the Con

Tommy's initial calls to Ginny were simply to build up trust. When time came for

the actual attack, she let her guard down and accepted Tommy for who he

claimed to be, the manager at another store in the chain.

And why wouldn't she accept him--she already knew him. She'd only met him

over the telephone, of course, but they had established a business friendship that

is the basis for trust. Once she had accepted him as an authority figure, a manager

in the same company, the trust had been established and the rest was a walk in the

park.

MITNICK MESSAGE

The sting technique of building trust is one of the most effective social

engineering tactics. You have to think whether you really know the person you're

talking to. In some rare instances, the person might not be who he claims to be.

Accordingly, we all have to learn to observe, think, and question authority.

VARIATION ON A THEME: CARD CAPTURE

Building a sense of trust doesn't necessarily demand a series of phone calls with

the victim, as suggested by the previous story. I recall one incident I witnessed

where five minutes was all it took.

Surprise, Dad

I once sat at a table in a restaurant with Henry and his father. In the course of

conversation, Henry scolded his father for giving out his credit card number as if

it were his phone number. "Sure, you have to give your card number when you

buy something," he said. "But giving it to a store that files your number in their

records - that's real dumb."

The only place I do that is at Studio Video," Mr. Conklin said, naming the same

chain of video stores. "But I go over my Visa bill every month. If they started

running up charges, I'd know it.

Sure," said Henry, "but once they have your number, it's so easy for somebody to

steal it "

You mean a crooked employee."

No, anybody - not just an employee."

You're talking through your hat," Mr. Conklin said.

I can call up right now and get them to tell me your Visa number," Henry shot

back.

No, you can't, "his father said.

"I can do it in five minutes, right here in front of you without ever leaving

the table.".Mr. Conklin looked tight around the eyes, the look of somebody feeling sure of

himself, but not wanting to show it. "I say you don't know that you're talking

about," he barked, taking out his wallet and slapping fifty dollar bill down on the

table. "If you can do what you say, that's

yours.

"I don't want your money, Dad," Henry said.

He pulled out his cell phone, asked his father which branch he used, and called

Directory Assistance for the phone number, as well as the number of the store in

nearby Sherman Oaks.

He then called the Sherman Oaks store. Using pretty much the same approach

described in the previous story, he quickly got the manager's name and the store

number.

Then he called the store where his father had an account. He pulled the old

impersonate-the-manager trick, using the manager's name as his own and giving

the store number he had just obtained. Then he used the same ruse: "Are your

computers working okay? Ours have been up and down." He listened to her reply

and then said, "Well, look, I've got one of your customers here who wants to rent

a video, but our computers are down right now. I need you to look up the

customer account and make sure he's a customer at your branch."

Henry gave him his father's name. Then, using only a slight variation in

technique, he made the request to read off the account information: address,

phone number, and date the account was opened. And then he said, "Hey, listen,

I'm holding up a long line of customers here. What's the credit card number and

expiration date?"

Henry held the cell phone to his ear with one hand while he wrote on a

paper napkin with the other. As he finished the call, he slid the napkin in

front of his father, who stared at it with his mouth hanging open. The to poor guy

looked totally shocked, as if his whole system of trust had just gone down the

drain.

Analyzing the Con

Think of your own attitude when somebody you don't know asks you for

something. If a shabby stranger comes to your door, you're not likely to let him

in; if a stranger comes to your door nicely dressed, shoes shined, hair perfect,

with polite manner and a smile, you're likely to be much less suspicious. Maybe

he's really Jason from the Friday the 13th movies, but you're willing to start out

trusting that person as long as he looks normal and doesn't have a carving knife in

his hand.

What's less obvious is that we judge people on the telephone the same way. Does

this person sound like he's trying to sell me something? Is he friendly and

outgoing or do I sense some kind of hostility or pressure? Does he or she have the.speech of an educated person? We judge these things and perhaps a dozen others

unconsciously, in a flash, often in the first few moments of the conversation.

MITNICK MESSAGE

It's human nature to think that it's unlikely you're being deceived in any particular

transaction, at least until you have some reason to believe otherwise. We weigh

the risks and then, most of the time, give people the benefit of the doubt. That's

the natural behavior of civilized people.., at least civilized people who have never

been conned or manipulated or cheated out of a large amount of money.

As children our parents taught us not to trust strangers. Maybe we should all heed

this age-old principle in today's workplace.

At work, people make requests of us all the time. Do you have an email address

for this guy? Where's the latest version of the customer list? Who's the

subcontractor on this part of the project? Please send me the latest project update.

I need the new version of the source code.

And guess what: Sometimes people who make those requests are people your

don't personally know, folks who work for some other part of the company, or

claim they do. But if the information they give checks out, and they appear to be

in the know ("Marianne said . . ."; "It's on the K-16 server..."; "... revision 26 of

the new product plans"), we extend our circle of trust to include them, and

blithely give them what they're asking for.

Sure, we may stumble a little, asking ourselves "Why does somebody in the

Dallas plant need to see the new product plans?" or "Could it hurt anything to

give out the name of the server it's on?" So we ask another question or two. If the

answers appear reasonable and the person's manner is reassuring, we let down

our guard, return to our natural inclination to trust our fellow man or woman, and

do (within reason) whatever it is we're being asked to do.

And don't think for a moment that the attacker will only target people 'ho use

company computer systems. What about the guy in the mail room? "Will you do

me a quick favor? Drop this into the intra company mail pouch?" Does the mail

room clerk know it contains a floppy disk with a special little program for the

CEO's secretary? Now that attacker gets his own personal copy of the CEO's

email. Wow! Could that really happen at your company? The answer is,

absolutely.

THE ONE-CENT CELL PHONE

Many people look around until the); find a better deal; social engineers don't look

for a better deal, they find a way to make a deal better. For example, sometimes a.company launches a marketing campaign that's so you can hardly bear to pass it

up, while the social engineer looks at the offer and wonders how he can sweeten

the deal.

Not long ago, a nationwide wireless company had a major promotion underway

offering a brand-new phone for one cent when you signed up for one of their

calling plans.

As lots of people have discovered too late, there are a good many questions a

prudent shopper should ask before signing up for a cell phone calling plan

whether the service is analog, digital, or a combination; the number of anytime

minutes you can use in a month; whether roaming charges are included.., and on,

and on. Especially important to understand up front is the contract term of

commitment--how many months or years will you have to commit to?

Picture a social engineer in Philadelphia who is attracted by a cheap phone model

offered by a cellular phone company on sign-up, but he hates the calling plan that

goes with it. Not a problem. Here's one way he might handle the situation.

The First Call: Ted

First, the social engineer dials an electronics chain store on West Girard.

"Electron City. This is Ted."

"Hi, Ted. This is Adam. Listen, I was in a few nights ago talking to a sales guy

about a cell phone. I said I'd call him back when I decided on the plan I wanted,

and I forgot his name. Who's the guy who works in that department on the night

shift?

"There's more than one. Was it William?"

"I'm not sure. Maybe it was William. What's he look like?" "Tall guy. Kind of

skinny."

"I think that's him. What's his last name, again?

"Hadley. H--A--D--L--E-- Y."

"Yeah, that sounds right. When's he going to be on?"

"Don't know his schedule this week, but the evening people come in about five."

"Good. I'll try him this evening, then. Thanks, Ted."

The Second Call: Katie

The next call is to a store of the same chain on North Broad Street.

"Hi, Electron City. Katie speaking, how can I help you?"

"Katie, hi. This is William Hadley, over at the West Girard store. How're you

today?"."Little slow, what's up?"

"I've got a customer who came in for that one-cent cell phone program. You

know the one I mean?"

"Right. I sold a couple of those last week."

"You still have some of the phones that go with that plan?"

"Got a stack of them."

"Great. 'Cause I just sold one to a customer. The guy passed credit; we signed

him up on the contract. I checked the damned inventory and we don't have any

phones left. I'm so embarrassed. Can you do me a favor? I'll send him over to

your store to pick up a phone. Can you sell him the phone for one cent and write

him up a receipt? And he's supposed to call me back once he's got the phone so I

can talk him through how to program it."

"Yeah, sure. Send him over."

"Okay. His name is Ted. Ted Yancy."

When the guy who calls himself Ted Yancy shows up at the

North Broad St. store, Katie writes up an invoice and sells him

the cell phone for one cent, just as she had been asked to do

by her "co worker." She fell for the con hook, line, and sinker.

When it's time to pay, the customer doesn't have any pennies in his pocket, so he

reaches into the little dish of pennies at the cashier's counter, takes one out, and

gives it to the girl at the register. He gets the phone without paying even the one

cent for it.

He's then free to go to another wireless company that uses the same model of

phone, and choose any service plan he likes. Preferably one on a month-to-month

basis, with no commitment required.

Analyzing the Con

Its natural for people to have a higher degree of acceptance for anyone who

claims to be a fellow employee, and who knows company procedures ,d lingo.

The social engineer in this story took advantage of that by finding out the details

of a promotion, identifying himself as a company

employee, and asking for a favor from another branch. This happens

between branches of retail stores and between departments in a company, people

are physically separated and deal with fellow employees they have never actually

met day in and day out.

HACKING INTO THE FEDS

People often don't stop to think about what materials their organization is making

available on the Web. For my weekly show on KFI Talk Radio in Los Angeles,.the producer did a search on line and found a copy of an instruction manual for

accessing-the database of the National Crime Information Center. Later he found

the actual NCIC manual itself on line, a sensitive document that gives all the

instructions for retrieving information from the FBI's national crime database.

The manual is a handbook for law enforcement agencies that gives the formatting

and codes for retrieving information on criminals and crimes from the national

database. Agencies all over the country can search the same database for

information to help solve crimes in their own jurisdiction. The manual contains

the codes used in the database for designating everything from different kinds of

tattoos, to different boat hulls, to denominations of stolen money and bonds.

Anybody with access to the manual can look up the syntax and the commands to

extract information from the national database. Then, following instructions from

the procedures guide, with a little nerve, anyone can extract information from the

database. The manual also gives phone numbers to call for support in using the

system. You may have similar manuals in your company offering product codes

or codes for retrieving sensitive information.

The FBI almost certainly has never discovered that their sensitive manual and

procedural instructions are available to anyone on line, and I don't think they'd be

very happy about it if they knew. One copy was posted by a government

department in Oregon, the other by a law enforcement agency in Texas. Why? In

each case, somebody probably thought the information was of no value and

posting it couldn't do any harm. Maybe somebody posted it on their intranet just

as a convenience to their own employees, never realizing that it made the

information available to everyone on the Internet who has access to a good search

engine such as Google - including the just-plain-curious, the wannabe cop, the

hacker, and the organized crime boss.

Tapping into the System

The principle of using such information to dupe someone in the government or a

business setting is the same: Because a social engineer knows how to access

specific databases or applications, or knows the names of a company's computer

servers, or the like, he gains credibility. Credibility leads to trust. Once a social

engineer has such codes, getting the information he needs

is an easy process. In this example, he might begin by calling a clerk in a local

state police Teletype office, and asking a question about one of the codes in the

manual - for example, the offense code. He might say something like, "When I do

an OFF inquiry in the NCIC, I'm getting a "System is down' error. Are you

getting the same thing when you do an OFF? Would you try it for me?" Or

maybe he'd say he was trying to look up a wpf - police talk for a wanted person's

file..The Teletype clerk on the other end of the phone would pick up the cue

that the caller was familiar with the operating procedures and the commands to

query the NCIC database. Who else other than someone trained in using NCIC

would know these procedures?

After the clerk has confirmed that her system is working okay, the conversation

might go something like this:

"I could use a little help." "What're you looking for?"

"I need you to do an OFF command on Reardon, Martin. DOB 10118/66."

"What's the sosh?" (Law enforcement people sometimes refer to the

social security number as the sosh.)

"700-14-7435."

After looking for the listing, she might come back with something like,

"He's got a 2602."

The attacker would only have to look at the NCIC on line to find the meaning of

the number: The man has a case of swindling on his record.

Analyzing the Con

An accomplished social engineer wouldn't stop for a minute to ponder ways of

breaking into the NCIC database. Why should he, when a simple call to his local

police department, and some smooth talking so he sounds convincingly like an

insider, is all it takes to get the information he wants? And the next time, he just

calls a different police agency and uses the same pretext.

LINGO

SOSH: Law enforcement slang for a social security number

You might wonder, isn't it risky to call a police department, a sheriff's station, or

a highway patrol office? Doesn't the attacker run a huge risk?

The answer is no . . . and for a specific reason. People in law enforce-ment, like

people in the military, have ingrained in them from the first day in the academy a

respect for rank. As long as the social engineer is posing as a sergeant or

lieutenant--a higher rank than the person he's talking to - the victim will be

governed by that well-learned lesson that says you don't question people who are

in a position of authority over you. Rank, in other words, has its privileges, in

particular the privilege of not being challenged by people of lower rank.

But don't think law enforcement and the military are the only places where this

respect for rank can be exploited by the social engineer. Social engineers often

use authority or rank in the corporate hierarchy as a weapon in their attacks on

businesses - as a number of the stories in these pages demonstrate..PREVENTING THE CON

What are some steps your organization can take to reduce the likelihood that

social engineers will take advantage of your employees' natural instinct to trust

people? Here are some suggestions.

Protect Your Customers

In this electronic age many companies that sell to the consumer keep credit cards

on file. There are reasons for this: It saves the customer the nuisance of having to

provide the credit card information each time he visits the store or the Web site to

make a purchase. However, the practice should be discouraged.

If you must keep credit card numbers on file, that process needs to be

accompanied by security provisions that go beyond encryption or using access

control. Employees need to be trained to recognize social engineering scams like

the ones in this chapter. That fellow employee you've never met in person but

who has become a telephone friend may not be who he or she claims to be. He

may not have the "need to know" to access sensitive customer information,

because he may not actually work for the company at all.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Everyone should be aware of the social engineer's modus operandi: Gather as

much information about the target as possible, and use that information to gain

trust as an insider. Then go for the jugular!

Trust Wisely

It's not just the people who have access to clearly sensitive information - the

software engineers, the folks in R&D, and so on - who need to be on the

defensive against intrusions. Almost everyone in your organization needs training

to protect the enterprise from industrial spies and information thieves.

Laying the groundwork for this should begin with a survey of enterprise- wide

information assets, looking separately at each sensitive, critical, or valuable asset,

and asking what methods an attacker might use to compromise those assets

through the use of social engineering tactics. Appropriate training for people who

have trusted access to such information should be designed around the answers to

these questions.

When anyone you don't know personally requests some information or material,

or asks you to perform any task on your computer, have your employees ask

themselves some. questions. If I gave this information to my worst enemy, could

it be used to injure me or my company? Do I completely understand the potential

effect of the commands I am being asked to enter into my computer?.We don't want to go through life being suspicious of every new person we

encounter. Yet the more trusting we are, the more likely that the next social

engineer to arrive in town will be able to deceive us into giving up our company's

proprietary information.

What Belongs on Your Intranet?

Parts of your intranet may be open to the outside world, other parts restricted to

employees. How careful is your company in making sure sensitive information

isn't posted where it's accessible to audiences you meant to protect it from? When

is the last time anyone in your organization checked to see if any sensitive

information on your company's intranet had inadvertently been made available

through the public-access areas of your Web site?

If your company has implemented proxy servers as intermediaries to protect the

enterprise from electronic security threats, have those servers been checked

recently to be sure they're configured properly?

In fact, has anyone ever checked the security of your intranet?.Chapter 5

"Let Me Help You"

We're all grateful when we're plagued by a problem and somebody with the

knowledge, skill, and willingness comes along offering to lend us a hand. The

social engineer understands that, and knows how to take advantage of it.

He also knows how to cause a problem for you.., then make you grateful when he

resolves the problem.., and finally play on your gratitude to extract some

information or a small favor from you that will leave your company (or maybe

you, individually) very much worse off for the encounter. And you may never

even know you've lost something of value. Here are some typical ways that social

engineers step forward to "help."

THE NETWORK OUTAGE

Day/Time: Monday, February 12, 3:25 p.m.

Place: Offices of Starboard Shipbuilding

The First Call: Tom Delay

"Tom DeLay, Bookkeeping."

"Hey, Tom, this is Eddie Martin from the Help Desk. We're trying to

troubleshoot a computer networking problem. Do you know if anyone in your

group has been having trouble staying on line?"

"Uh, not that I know of."

"And you're not having any problems yourself."

"No, seems fine."

"Okay, that's good. Listen, we're calling people who might be affected 'cause itLs

important you let us know right away if you lose your network connection."

"That doesn't sound good. You think it might happen?"

"We hope not, but you'll call if it does, right?"

"You better believe it."

"Listen, sounds like having your network connection go down would be a

problem for you..."

"You bet it would."

"... so while we're working on this, let me give you my cell phone number. Then

you can reach me directly if you need to."

"That'd be great. Go ahead."

"It's 555 867 5309."

"555 867 5309. Got it. Hey, thanks. What was your name again?"

"It's Eddie. Listen, one other thing--I need to check which port your computer is

connected to. Take a look on your computer and see if there's a sticker

somewhere that says something like 'Port Number'."."Hang on No, don't see anything like that."

"Okay, then in the back of the computer, can you recognize the network cable."

"Yeah."

"Trace it back to where it's plugged in. See if there's a label on the jack it's

plugged into."

"Hold on a second. Yeah, wait a minute - I have to squat down here so I can get

close enough to read it. Okay - it says Port 6 dash 47."

"Good - that's what we had you down as, just making sure."

The Second Call: The IT Guy

Two days later, a call came through to the same company's Network Operations

Center.

"Hi, this is Bob; I'm in Tom DeLay's office in Bookkeeping. We're trying to

troubleshoot a cabling problem. I need you to disable Port 6-47."

The IT guy said it would be done in just a few minutes, and to let them know

when he was ready to have it enabled.

The Third Call: Getting Help from the Enemy

About an hour later, the guy who called himself Eddie Martin was shopping at

Circuit City when his cell phone rang. He checked the caller ID, saw the call was

from the shipbuilding company, and hurried to a quiet spot before answering.

"Help Desk, Eddie."

"Oh, hey, Eddie. You've got an echo, where are you?"

"I'm, uh, in a cabling closet. Who's this?

"It's Tom DeLay. Boy, am I glad I got ahold of you. Maybe you remember you

called me the other day? My network connection just went down like you said it

might, and I'm a little panicky here."

"Yeah, we've got a bunch of people down right now. We should have it taken

care of by the end of the day. That okay?"

"NO! Damn, I'll get way behind if I'm down that long. What's the best you can do

for me?"

"How pressed are you?"

"I could do some other things for right now. Any chance you could take care of it

in half an hour?"

"HALF AN HOUR! You don't want much. Well, look, I'll drop what I'm doing

and see if I can tackle it for you."

"Hey, I really appreciate that, Eddie."

The Fourth Call: Gotcha!

Forty-five minutes later...."Tom? It's Eddie. Go ahead and try your network connection."

After a couple of moments:

"Oh, good, it's working. That's just great."

"Good, glad I could take care of it for you."

"Yeah, thanks a lot."

"Listen, if you want to make sure your connection doesn't go down again, there's

some software you oughta be running. Just take a couple of minutes."

"Now's not the best time."

"I understand... It could save us both big headaches the next time this network

problem happens."

"Well . . . if it's only a few minutes."

"Here's what you do..."

Eddie then took Tom through the steps of downloading a small application from a

Web site. After the program had downloaded, Eddie told Tom to double-click on

it. He tried, but reported:

"It's not working. It's not doing anything."

"Oh, what a pain. Something must be wrong with the program. Let's just get rid

of it, we can try again another time." And he talked Tom through the steps of

deleting the program so it couldn't be recovered.

Total elapsed time, twelve minutes.

The Attacker's Story

Bobby Wallace always thought it was laughable when he picked up a good

assignment like this one and his client pussyfooted around the unasked but

obvious question of why they wanted the information. In this case he could only

think of two reasons. Maybe they represented some outfit that was interested in

buying the target company, Starboard Shipbuilding, and wanted to know what

kind of financial shape they were really in - especially all the stuff the target

might want to keep hidden from a potential buyer. Or maybe they represented

investors who thought there was something fishy about the way the money was

being handled and wanted to find out whether some of the executives had a case

of hands-in-the cookie-jar.

And maybe his client also didn't want to tell him the real reason because, if

Bobby knew how valuable the information was, he'd probably want more money

for doing the job..There are a lot of ways to crack into a company's most secret files. Bobby spent a

few days mulling over the choices and doing a little checking around before he

decided on a plan. He settled on one that called for an approach he especially

liked, where the target is set up so that he asks the attacker for help.

For starters, Bobby picked up a $39.95 cell phone at a convenience store. He

placed a call to the man he had chosen as his target, passed himself off as being

from the company help desk, and set things up so the man would call Bobby's

cell phone any time he found a problem with his network connection.

He left a pause of two days so as not to be too obvious, and then made a call to

the network operations center (NOC) at the company. He claimed he was trouble-shooting

a problem for Tom, the target, and asked to have Tom's network

connection disabled. Bobby knew this was the trickiest part of the whole

escapade - in many companies, the help desk people work closely with the NOC;

in fact, he knew the help desk is often part of the IT organization. But the

indifferent NOC guy he spoke with treated the call as routine, didn't ask for the

name of the help desk person who was supposedly working on the networking

problem, and agreed to disable the target's network port. When done, Tom would

be totally isolated from the company's intranet, unable to retrieve files from the

server, exchange files with his co-workers, download his email, or even send a

page of data to the printer. In today's world, that's like living in a cave.

As Bobby expected, it wasn't long before his cell phone rang. Of course he made

himself sound eager to help this poor "fellow employee" in distress. Then he

called the NOC and had the man's network connection turned back on. Finally,

he called the man and manipulated him once again, this time making him feel

guilty for saying no after Bobby had done him a favor. Tom agreed to the request

that he download a piece of software to his computer.

Of course, what he agreed to wasn't exactly what it seemed. The software that

Tom was told would keep his network connection from going down, was really a

Trojan Horse, a software application that did for Tom's computer what the

original deception did for the Trojans: It brought the enemy inside the camp. Tom

reported that nothing happened when he double-clicked on the software icon; the

fact was that, by design, he couldn't see anything happening, even though the

small application was installing a secret program that would allow the infiltrator

covert access to Tom's computer.

With the software running, Bobby was provided with complete control over

Tom's computer, an arrangement known as a remote command shell. When

Bobby accessed Tom's computer, he could look for the accounting files that.might be of interest and copy them. Then, at his leisure, he'd examine them for

the information that would give his clients what they were looking for.

LINGO

TROJAN HORSE: A program containing malicious or harmful code, designed to

damage the victim's computer or files, or obtain information from the victim's

computer or network. Some Trojans are designed to hide within the computer's

operating system and spy on every keystroke or action, or accept instruction over

a network connection to perform some function, all without the victim being

aware of its presence.

And that wasn't all. He could go back at any time to search through the email

messages and private memos of the company's executives, running a text search

for words that might reveal any interesting tidbits of information.

Late on the night that he conned his target into installing the Trojan Horse

software, Bobby threw the cell phone into a Dumpster. Of course he was careful

to clear the memory first and pull the battery out before he tossed it - the last

thing he wanted was for somebody to call the cell phone's number by mistake and

have the phone start ringing!

Analyzing the Con

The attacker spins a web to convince the target he has a problem that, in fact,

doesn't really exist - or, as in this case, a problem that hasn't happened yet, but

that the attacker knows will happen because he's going to cause it. He then

presents himself as the person who can provide the solution.

The setup in this kind of attack is particularly juicy for the attacker:

Because of the seed planted in advance, when the target discovers he has

a problem, he himself makes the phone call to plead for help. The attacker

just sits and waits for the phone to ring, a tactic fondly known in the trade

as reverse social engineering. An attacker who can make the target call him

gains instant credibility: If I place a call to someone I think is on the help desk,

I'm not going to start asking him to prove his identity. That's when the attacker

has it made.

LINGO

REMOTE COMMAND SHELL: A non graphical interface that accepts text

based commands to perform certain functions or run programs. An attacker who

exploits technical vulnerabilities or is able to install a Trojan Horse program on

the victims computer may be able to obtain remote access to a command shell.REVERSE SOCIAL ENGINEERING: A social engineering attack in which the

attacker sets up a situation where the victim encounters a problem and contacts

the attacker for help. Another form of reverse social engineering turns the tables

on the attacker. The target recognizes the attack, and uses psychological

principles of influence to draw out as much information as possible from the

attacker so that the business can safeguard targeted assets.

MITNICK MESSAGE

If a stranger does you a favor, then asks you for a favor, don't reciprocate without

thinking carefully about what he's asking for.

In a con like this one, the social engineer tries to pick a target who is likely to

have limited knowledge of computers. The more he knows, the more likely that

he'll get suspicious, or just plain figure out that he's being manipulated. What I

sometimes call the computer-challenged worker, who is less knowledgeable

about technology and procedures, is more likely to comply. He's all the more

likely to fall for a ruse like "Just download this little program," because he has no

idea of the potential damage a software program can inflict. What's more, there's

a much smaller chance he'll understand the value of the information on the

computer network that he's placing at risk.

A LITTLE HELP FOR THE NEW GAL

New employees are a ripe target for attackers. They don't know many people yet,

they don't know the procedures or the dos and don'ts of the company. And, in the

name of making a good first impression, they're eager show how cooperative and

quick to respond they can be.

Helpful Andrea

"Human Resources, Andrea Calhoun."

"Andrea, hi, this is Alex, with Corporate Security."

"Yes?"

"How're you doing today?"

"Okay. What can I help you with?"

"Listen, we're developing a security seminar for new employees and we need to

round up some people to try it out on. I want to get the name and phone number

of all the new hires in the past month. Can you help me with that?"

"I won't be able to get to it 'til this afternoon. Is that okay?

"What's your extension?"

"Sure, okay, it's 52 . . . oh, uh, but I'll be in meetings most of today. I'll call you

when I'm back in my office, probably after four.".When Alex called about 4:30, Andrea had the list ready, and read him the names

and extensions.

A Message for Rosemary

Rosemary Morgan was delighted with her new job. She had never worked for a

magazine before and was finding the people much friendlier than she expected, a

surprise because of the never-ending pressure most of the staff was always under

to get yet another issue finished by the monthly deadline. The call she received

one Thursday morning reconfirmed that impression of friendliness.

"Is that Rosemary Morgan?"

"Yes."

"Hi, Rosemary. This is Bill Jorday, with the Information Security group."

"Yes?"

"Has anyone from our department discussed best security practices with you?"

"I don't think so."

"Well, let's see. For starters, we don't allow anybody to install software brought

in from outside the company. That's because we don't want any liability for

unlicensed use of software. And to avoid any problems with software that might

have a worm or a virus."

"Okay."

"Are you aware of our email policies?"

"No."

"What's your current email address?" "Rosemary@ttrzine.net."

"Do you sign in under the username Rosemary?"

"No, it's R underscore Morgan."

"Right. We like to make all our new employees aware that it can be dangerous to

open any email attachment you aren't expecting. Lots of viruses and worms get

sent around and they come in emails that seem to be from people you know. So if

you get an email with an attachment you weren't expecting you should always

check to be sure the person listed as sender really did send you the message. You

understand?"

"Yes, I've heard about that."

"Good. And our policy is that you change your password every ninety days.

When did you last change your password?"

"I've only been here three weeks; I'm still using the one I first set."

"Okay, that's fine. You can wait the rest of the ninety days. But we need to be

sure people are using passwords that aren't too easy to guess. Are you using a

password that consists of both letters and numbers?"

"No."

We need to fix that. What password are you using now?"

"It's my daughter's name - Annette."

"That's really not a secure password. You should never choose a password that's

based on family information. Well, let's see.., you could do the same thing I do..It's okay to use what you're using now as the first part of the password, but then

each time you change it, add a number for the current month."

"So if I did that now, for March, would I use three, or oh-three."

"That's up to you. Which would you be more comfortable with?"

"I guess Annette-three."

"Fine. Do you want me to walk you through how to make the change?"

"No, I know how."

"Good. And one more thing we need to talk about. You have anti-virus software

on your computer and it's important to keep it up to date. You should never

disable the automatic update even if your computer slows down every once in a

while. Okay?"

"Sure."

"Very good. And do you have our phone number over here,

so you can call us if you have any computer problems?"

She didn't. He gave her the number, she wrote it down carefully, and went back

to work, once again, pleased at how well taken care of she felt.

Analyzing the Con

This story reinforces an underlying theme you'll find throughout this book: The

most common information that a social engineer wants from an employee,

regardless of his ultimate goal, is the target's authentication credentials. With an

account name and password in hand from a single employee in the right area of

the company, the attacker has what he needs to get inside and locate whatever

information he's after. Having this information is like finding the keys to the

kingdom; with them in hand, he can move freely around the corporate landscape

and find the treasure he seeks.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Before new employees are allowed access to any company computer systems,

they must be trained to follow good security practices, especially policies about

never disclosing their passwords.

NOT AS SAFE AS YOU THINK

"The company that doesn't make an effort to protect its sensitive information is

just plain negligent." A lot of people would agree with that statement. And the

world would be a better place if life were so obvious and so simple. The truth is

that even those companies that do make an effort to protect confidential

information may be at serious risk..Here's a story that illustrates once again how companies fool themselves every

day into thinking their security practices, designed by experienced, competent,

professionals, cannot be circumvented.

Steve Cramer's Story

It wasn't a big lawn, not one of those expensively seeded spreads. It garnered no

envy. And it certainly wasn't big enough to give him an excuse for buying a sit-down

mower, which was fine because he wouldn't have used one anyway. Steve

enjoyed cutting the grass with a hand-mower because it took longer, and the

chore provided a convenient excuse to focus on his own thoughts instead of

listening to Anna telling him stories about the people at the bank where she

worked or explaining errands for him to do. He hated those honey-do lists that

had become an integral part of his weekends. It flashed though his mind that 12-year-

old Pete was damn smart to join the swimming team. Now he'd have to be at

practice or a meet every Saturday so he wouldn't get stuck with Saturday chores.

Some people might think Steve's job designing new devices for GeminiMed

Medical Products was boring; Steve knew he was saving lives. Steve thought of

himself as being in a creative line of work. Artist, music composer, engineer - in

Steve's view they all faced the same kind of challenge he did: They created

something that no one had ever done before. And his latest, an intriguingly clever

new type of heart stent, would be his proudest achievement yet.

It was almost 11:30 on this particular Saturday, and Steve was annoyed because

he had almost finished cutting the grass and hadn't made any real progress in

figuring out how to reduce the power requirement on the heart stent, the last

remaining hurdle. A perfect problem to mull over while mowing, but no solution

had come.

Anna appeared at the door, her hair covered in the red paisley cowboy scarf she

always wore when dusting. "Phone call," she shouted to him. "Somebody from

work."

"Who?" Steve shouted back.

"Ralph something. I think."

Ralph? Steve couldn't remember anybody at GeminiMed named Ralph who

might be calling on a weekend. But Anna probably had the name wrong.

"Steve, this is Ramon Perez in Tech Support." Ramon - how in the world did

Anna get from a Hispanic name to Ralph, Steve wondered.

"This is just a courtesy call,, Ramon was saying. "Three of the servers are down,

we think maybe a worm, and we have to wipe the drives and restore from backup.

We should be able to have your files up and running by Wednesday or

Thursday. If we're lucky."."Absolutely unacceptable," Steve said firmly, trying not to let his frustration take

over. How could these people be so stupid? Did they really think he could

manage without access to his files all weekend and most of next week? "No way.

I'm going to sit down at my home terminal in just about two hours and I will need

access to my files. Am I making this clear?"

"Yeah, well, everybody I've called so far wants to be at the top of the list.

I gave up my weekend to come in and work on this and it's no fun having

everybody I talk to get pissed at me."

"I'm on a tight deadline, the company is counting on this; I've got to get work

done this afternoon. What part of this do you not understand?"

"I've still got a lot of people to call before I can even get started," Ramon laid.

"How about we say you'll have your files by Tuesday?"

"Not Tuesday, not Monday, today. NOW!" Steve said, wondering who he

was going to call if he couldn't get his point through this guy's thick skull.

"Okay, okay," Ramon said, and Steve could hear him breathe a sigh of

annoyance. "Let me see what I can do to get you going. You use the RM22

server, right?"

"RM22 and the GM16. Both."

"Right. Okay, I can cut some corners, save some time--I'll need your username

and password."

Uh oh, Steve thought. What's going on here? Why would he need my password?

Why would IT, of all people, ask for it?

"What did you say your last name was? And who's your supervisor?" "Ramon

Perez. Look, I tell you what, when you were hired, there was a form you had to

fill out to get your user account, and you had to put down a password. I could

look that up and show you we've got it on file here. Okay?"

Steve mulled that over for a few moments, then agreed. He hung on with growing

impatience while Ramon went to retrieve documents from a file cabinet. Finally

back on the phone, Steve could hear him shuffling through a stack of papers.

"Ah, here it is," Ramon said at last. "You put down the password 'Janice.'" Janice,

Steve thought. It was his mother's name, and he had indeed sometimes used it as

a password. He might very well have put that down for his password when filling

out his new-hire papers.

"Yes, that's right," he acknowledged.

"Okay, we're wasting time here. You know I'm for real, you want me to use

the shortcut and get your files back in a hurry, you re gonna have to help me

out here."

"My ID is s, d, underscore, cramer--c-r-a-m-e-r. The password is 'pelican 1 .'"

"I'll get right on it," Ramon said, sounding helpful at last. "Give me a couple of

hours."

Steve finished the lawn, had lunch, and by the time he got to his computer found

that his files had indeed been restored. He was pleased with himself for handling.that uncooperative IT guy so forcefully, and hoped Anna had heard how assertive

he was. Would be good to give the guy or his boss an attaboy, but he knew it

was one of those things he'd never get around to doing.

Craig Cogburne's Story

Craig Cogburne had been a salesman for a high-tech company, and done well at

it. After a time he began to realize he had a skill for reading a customer,

understanding where the person was resistant and recognizing

some weakness or vulnerability that made it easy to close the sale. He began to

think about other ways to use this talent, and the path eventually led him into a

far more lucrative field: corporate espionage.

This one was a hot assignment. Didn't look to take me very long and worth

enough to pay for a trip to Hawaii. Or maybe Tahiti.

The guy that hired me, he didn't tell me the client, of course, but it figured to be

some company that wanted to catch up with the competition in one quick, big,

easy leap. All I'd have to do is get the designs and product specs for a new

gadget called a heart stent, whatever that was. The company was called

GeminiMed. Never heard of it, but it was a Fortune 500 outfit with offices in half

a dozen locations - which makes the job easier than a smaller company where

there's a fair chance the guy you're talking to knows the guy you're claiming to be

and knows you're not him. This, like pilots say about a midair collision, can ruin

your whole day.

My client sent me a fax, a bit from some doctor's magazine that said GeminiMed

was working on a stent with a radical new design and it would be called the STH-IO0.

For crying out loud, some reporter has already done a big piece of the

legwork for me. I had one thing I needed even before I got started, the new

product name.

First problem: Get names of people in the company who worked on the STH-100

or might need to see the designs. So I called the switchboard operator and said, "I

promised one of the people in your engineering group I'd get in touch with him

and I don't remember his last name, but his first name started with an S." And she

said, "We have a Scott Archer and a Sam Davidson." I took a long shot. "Which

one works in the STH100 group?" She didn't know, so I just picked Scott Archer

at random, and she rang his phone..When he answered, I said, "Hey, this is Mike, in the mail room. We've got a

FedEx here that's for the Heart Stent STH-100 project team. Any idea who that

should go to?" He gave me the name of the project leader, Jerry Mendel. I even

got him to look up the phone number for me.

I called. Mendel wasn't there but his voice mail message said he'd be on vacation

till the thirteenth, which meant he had another week left for skiing or whatever,

and anybody who needed something in the meantime should call Michelle on

9137. Very helpful, these people. Very helpful.

I hung up and called Michelle, got her on the phone and said, "This is Bill

Thomas. Jerry told me I should call you when I had the spec ready that he

wanted the guys on his team to review. You're working on the heart stent, right?"

She said they were.

Now we were getting to the sweaty part of the scam. If she started sounding

suspicious, I was ready to play the card about how I was just trying to

do a favor Jerry had asked me for. I said, "Which system are you on?"

"System?"

"Which computer servers does your group use?"

"Oh," she said, "RM22. And some of the group also use GM16." Good. I needed

that, and it was a piece of information I could get from her without making her

suspicious. Which softened her up for the next bit, done as casually as I could

manage. "Jerry said you could give me a list of email addresses for people on the

development team," I said, and held my breath.

"Sure. The distribution list is too long to read off, can I email it to you?"

Oops. Any email address that didn't end in GeminiMed.com would be

a huge red flag. "How about you fax it to me?" I said.

She had no problem with doing that.

"Our fax machine is on the blink. I'll have to get the number of another one. Call

you back in a bit," I said, and hung up.

Now, you might think I was saddled with a sticky problem here, but it's just

another routine trick of the trade. I waited a while so my voice wouldn't sound

familiar to the receptionist, then called her and said, "Hi, it's Bill Thomas, our fax

machine isn't working up here, can I have a fax sent to your machine?" She said

sure, and gave me the number.

Then I just walk in and pick up the fax, right? Of course not. First rule: Never

visit the premises unless you absolutely have to. They have a hard time

identifying you if you're just a voice on the telephone. And if they can't identify.you, they can't arrest you. It's hard to put handcuffs around a voice. So I called

the receptionist back after a little while and asked her, did my fax come? "Yes,"

she said.

"Look," I told her, "I've got to get that to a consultant we're using. Could you

send it out for me?" She agreed. And why not--how could any receptionist be

expected to recognize sensitive data? While she sent the fax out to the

"consultant," I had my exercise for the day walking over to a stationery store near

me, the one with the sign out front "Faxes Sent/Rcvd." My fax was supposed to

arrive before I did, and as expected, it was there waiting for me when I walked in.

Six pages at $1.75. For a $10 bill and change, I had the group's entire list of

names and email addresses.

Getting Inside

Okay, so I had by now talked to three or four different people in only a few hours

and was already one giant step closer to getting inside the company's computers.

But I'd need a couple more pieces before I was home.

Number one was the phone number for dialing into the Engineering server from

outside. I called GeminiMed again and asked the switchboard operator for the IT

Department, and asked the guy who answered for somebody who could give me

some computer help. He transferred me, and I put on an act of being confused

and kind of stupid about anything technical. "I'm at home, just bought a new

laptop, and I need to set it up o I can dial in from outside."

The procedure was obvious but I patiently let him talk me through it until he got

to the dial-in phone number. He gave me the number like it was just another

routine piece of information. Then I made him wait while I tried it. Perfect.

So now I had passed the hurdle of connecting to the network. I dialed in and

found they were set up with a terminal server that would let a caller connect to

any computer on their internal network. After a bunch of tries I stumbled across

somebody's computer that had a guest account with no password required. Some

operating systems, when first installed, direct the user to set up an ID and

password, but also provide a guest account. The user is supposed to set his or her

own password for the guest account or disable it, but most people don't know

about this, or just don't bother. This system was probably just set up and the

owner hadn't bothered to disable the guest account.

LINGO

PASSWOPRD HASH: A string of gibberish that results from processing a

password through a one way encryption process. The process is supposedly.irreversible; that is, its believed that it is not possible to reconstruct the password

from the hash

Thanks to the guest account, I now had access to one computer, which turned out

to be running an older version of the UNIX operating system. Under UNIX, the

operating system maintains a password file which con- rains the encrypted

passwords of everybody authorized to access that computer. The password file

contains the one-way hash (that is, a form of encryption that is irreversible) of

every user's password. With a one-way hash an actual password such as, say,

"justdoit" would be represented by a hash in encrypted form; in this case the hash

would be converted by UNIX to thirteen alphanumeric characters.

When Billy Bob down the hall wants to transfer some files to a computer, he's

required to identify himself by providing a username and password. The system

program that" checks his authorization encrypts the password he enters, and then

compares the result to the encrypted password (the hash) contained in the

password file; if the two match, he's given access.

Because the passwords in the file were encrypted, the file itself was made

available to any user on the theory that there's no known way to decrypt the

passwords. That's a laugh - I downloaded the file, ran a dictionary attack on it

(see Chapter 12 for more about this method) and found that one of the engineers

on the development team, a guy named Steven Cramer, currently had an account

on the computer with the password "Janice." Just on the chance, I tried entering

his account with that password on one of the development servers; if it had

worked, it would have saved me some time and a little risk. It didn't.

That meant I'd have to trick the guy into telling me his username and password.

For that, I'd wait until the weekend. 70 You already know the rest. On Saturday I

called Cramer and walked him through a ruse about a worm and the servers

having to be restored from backup to overcome his suspicions.

What about the story I told him, the one about listing a password when he filled

out his employee papers? I was counting on him not remembering that had never

happened. A new employee fills out so many forms that, years later, who would

remember? And anyway, if I had struck out with him, I still had that long list of

other names.

With his username and password, I got into the server, fished around for a little

while, and then located the design files for the STH-100. I wasn't exactly sure

which ones were key, so I just transferred all the files to a dead drop, a free FTP

site in China, where they could be stored without anybody getting suspicious. Let

the client sort through the junk and find what he wants..LINGO

DEAD DROP A place for leaving information where it is unlikely to be found by

others. In the world of traditional spies, this might be behind a loose stone in a

wall; in the world of the computer hacker, it's commonly an Internet site in a

remote country.

Analyzing the Con

For the man we're calling Craig Cogburne, or anyone like him equally skilled in

the larcenous-but-not-always-illegal arts of social engineering, the challenge

presented here was almost routine. His goal was to locate and download files

stored on a secure corporate computer, protected by a firewall and all the usual

security technologies.

Most of his work was as easy as catching rainwater in a barrel. He began

by posing as somebody from the mail room and furnished an added sense of

urgency by claiming there was a FedEx package waiting to be delivered. This

deception produced the name of the team leader for the heart-stent engineering

group, who was on vacation, but - convenient for any social engineer trying to

steal information - he had helpfully left the name and phone number of his

assistant. Calling her, Craig defused any suspicions by claiming that he was

responding to a request from the team leader. With the team leader out of town,

Michelle had no way to verify his claim. She accepted it as the truth and had no

problem providing a list of people in the group - for Craig, a necessary and highly

prized set of information.

She didn't even get suspicious when Craig wanted the list sent by fax instead of

by email, ordinarily more convenient on both ends. Why was she so gullible?

Like many employees, she didn't want her boss to return to town and find she had

stonewalled a caller who was just trying to do something the boss had asked him

for. Besides, the caller said that the boss had not just authorized the request, but

asked for his assistance. Once again, here's an example of someone displaying the

strong desire to be a team player, which makes most people susceptible to

deception.

Craig avoided the risk of physically entering the building simply by having the

fax sent to the receptionist, knowing she was likely to be helpful. Receptionists

are, after all, usually chosen for their charming personalities and their ability to

make a good impression. Doing small favors like receiving a fax and sending it

on comes with the receptionist's territory, a fact that Craig was able to take

advantage of. What she was ending out happened to be information that might

have raised alarm bells with anyone knowing the value of the information - but

how could receptionist be expected to know which information is benign and

which sensitive?.Using a different style of manipulation, Craig acted confused and naïve to

convince the guy in computer operations to provide him with the dial up access

number to the company's terminal server, the hardware used as a connection

point to other computer systems within the internal network.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Everybody's first priority at work is to get the job done. Under that pressure,

security practices often take second place and are overlooked or ignored. Social

engineers rely on this when practicing their craft.

Craig was able to connect easily by trying a default password that had never been

changed, one of the glaring, wide-open gaps that exist throughout many internal

networks that rely on firewall security. In fact, the default passwords for many

operating systems, routers, and other types of products, including PBXs, are

made available on line. Any social engineer, hacker, or industrial spy, as well as

the just plain curious, can find the list at http://www.phenoelit.de/dpl/dpl.html.

(It's absolutely incredible how easy the Internet makes life for those who know

where to look. And now you know, too.)

Cogburne then actually managed to convince a cautious, suspicious man

("What did you say your last name was? Who's your supervisor?") to divulge his

username and password so that he could access servers used by the heart-stent

development team. This was like leaving Craig with an open door to browse the

company's most closely guarded secrets and download the plans for the new

product.

What if Steve Cramer had continued to be suspicious about Craig's call? It was

unlikely he would do anything about reporting his suspicions until he showed up

at work on Monday morning, which would have been too late to prevent the

attack.

One key to the last part of the ruse: Craig at first made himself sound

lackadaisical and uninterested in Steve's concerns, then changed his tune and

sounded as if he was trying to help so Steve could get his work done. Most of the

time, if the victim believes you're trying to help him or do him some kind of

favor, he will part with confidential information that he would have otherwise

protected carefully.

PREVENTING THE CON

One of the most powerful tricks of the social engineer involves turning the tables.

That's what you've seen in this chapter. The social engineer creates the problem,

and then magically solves the problem, deceiving the victim into providing

access to the company's most guarded secrets. Would your employees fall for this.type of ruse? Have you bothered to draft and distribute specific security rules that

could help to prevent it?

Educate, Educate, and Educate...

There's an old story about a visitor to New York who stops a man on the street

and asks, "How do I get to Carnegie Hall?" The man answers, "Practice, practice,

practice." Everyone is so vulnerable to social engineering attacks that a

company's only effective defense is to educate and train your people, giving them

the practice they need to spot a social engineer. And then keep reminding people

on a consistent basis of what they learned in the training, but are all too apt to

forget.

Everyone in the organization must be trained to exercise an appropriate degree of

suspicion and caution when contacted by someone he or she doesn't personally

know, especially when that someone is asking for any sort of access to a

computer or network. It's human nature to want to trust others, but as the

Japanese say, business is war. Your business cannot afford to let down its guard.

Corporate security policy must clearly define appropriate and inappropriate

behavior.

Security is not one-size-fits-all. Business personnel usually have disparate roles

and responsibilities and each position has associated vulnerabilities. There

should be a base level of training that everyone in the company is required to

complete, and then people must also be trained according to their job profile to

adhere to certain procedures that will reduce the chance that they will become

part of the problem. People who work with sensitive information or are placed in

positions of trust should be given additional specialized training.

Keeping Sensitive Information Safe

When people are approached by a stranger offering to help, as seen in the stories

in this chapter, they have to fall back on corporate security policy that is tailored

as appropriate to the business needs, size, and culture of your company.

NOTE

Personally, I don't believe any business should allow any exchange of passwords.

Its much easier to establish a hard rule that forbids personnel from ever sharing or

exchanging confidential passwords. Its safer, too. But each business has to assess

its own culture and security concerns in making this choice

Never cooperate with a stranger who asks you to look up information, enter

unfamiliar commands into a computer, make changes to software settings or - the

most potentially disastrous of all - open an email attachment or download

unchecked software. Any software program - even one that appears to do nothing

at all - may not be as innocent as it appears to be..There are certain procedures that, no matter how good our training, we tend to

grow careless about over time. Then we forget about that training at crunch time,

just when we need it. You would think that not giving out your account name and

password is something that just about everybody knows (or should know) and

hardly needs to be told: it's simple common sense. But in fact, every employee

needs to be reminded frequently that giving out the account name and password

to their office computer, their home computer, or even the postage machine in the

mail room is equivalent to giving out the PIN number for their ATM card.

There is occasionally - very occasionally - a quite valid circumstance when it's

necessary, perhaps even important, to give someone else confidential

information. For that reason, it's not appropriate to make an absolute rule about

"never." Still, your security policies and procedures do need to be very specific

about circumstances under which an employee may give out his or her password

and - most importantly--who is authorized to ask for the information.

Consider the Source

In most organizations, the rule should be that any information that can possibly

cause harm to the company or to a. fellow employee may be given only to

someone who is known on a face-to-face basis, or whose voice is so familiar that

you recognize it without question.

In high-security situations, the only requests that should be granted are ones

delivered in person or with a strong form of authentication--for example, two

separate items such as a shared secret and a time-based token.

Data classification procedures must designate that no information be provided

from a part of the organization involved with sensitive work to anyone not

personally known or vouched for in some manner.

NOTE

Incredibly, even looking up the name and phone number of the caller in the

company's employee database and calling him back is not an absolute guarantee

social engineers know ways of planting names in a corporate database or

redirecting telephone calls.

So how do you handle a legitimate-sounding request for information from

another company employee, such as the list of names and email addresses of

people in your group? In fact, how do you raise awareness so that an item like

this, which is clearly less valuable than, say, a spec sheet for a product under

development, is recognized as something for internal use only? One major part of

the solution: Designate employees in each department who will handle all

requests for information to be sent outside the group. An advanced security-.training program must then be provided to make these designated employees

aware of the special verification procedures they should follow.

Forget Nobody

Anyone can quickly rattle off the identity of organizations within her company

that need a high degree of protection against malicious attacks. But we often

overlook other places that are less obvious, yet highly vulnerable. In one of these

stories, the request for a fax to be sent to a phone number within the company

seemed innocent and secure enough, yet the attacker took advantage of this

security loophole. The lesson here: Everybody from secretaries and

administrative assistants to company executives and high-level managers needs to

have special security training so that they can be alert to these types of tricks.

And don't forget to guard the front door: Receptionists, too, are often prime

targets for social engineers and must also be made aware of the deceptive

techniques used by some visitors and callers.

Corporate security should establish a single point of contact as a kind of central

clearinghouse for employees who think they may have been the target of a social

engineering ruse. Having a single place to report security incidents will provide

an effective early-warning system that will make it dear when a coordinated

attack is under way, so that any damage can be controlled immediately..Chapter 6

"Can You Help Me?"

You've seen how social engineers trick people by offering to help.Another

favorite approach turns the tables: The social engineer manipulates by pretending

he needs the other person to help him. We can all sympathize with people in a

tight spot, and the approach proves effective over and over again in allowing a

social engineer to reach his goal.

THE OUT-OF TOWNER

A story in Chapter 3 showed how an attacker can talk a victim into revealing his

employee number. This one uses a different approach for achieving the same

result, and then shows how the attacker can make use of that

Keeping Up with the Joneses

In Silicon Valley there is a certain global company that shall be nameless. The

scattered sales offices and other field installations around the worldare all

connected to that company's headquarters over a WAN, a wide area network. The

intruder, a smart, feisty guy named Brian Atterby, knew it was almost always

easier to break into a network at one of the remote sites where security is

practically guaranteed to be more lax than at headquarters.

The intruder phoned the Chicago office and asked to speak with Mr Jones.

The receptionist asked if he knew Mr. Jones's first name; he answered,

"I had it here, I'm looking for it. How many Joneses do you have?" She said,

"Three. Which department would he be in?"

He said, "If you read me the names, maybe I'll recognize it." So she did:

"Barry, Joseph, and Gordon."

"Joe. I'm pretty sure that was it," he said. "And he was in .. which

department?"

"Business Development."

"Fine. Can you connect me, please?"

She put the call through. When Jones answered, the attacker said, "Mr.

Jones? Hi, this is Tony in Payroll. We just put through your request to have your

paycheck deposited directly to your credit union account."

"WHAT???!!! You've got to be kidding. I didn't make any request like that. I

don't even have an account at a credit union."

"Oh, damn, I already put it through."

Jones was more than a little upset at the idea that his paycheck might be

going to someone else's account, and he was beginning to think the guy on the

other end of the phone must be a little slow. Before he could even reply, the.attacker said, "I better see what happened. Payroll changes are entered by

employee number. What's your employee number?"

Jones gave the number. The caller said, "No, you're right, the request wasn't from

you, then." They get more stupid every year, Jones thought.

"Look, I'll see it's taken care of. I'll put in a correction right now. So don't worry -

you'll get your next paycheck okay," the guy said reassuringly.

A Business Trip

Not long after, the system administrator in the company's Austin, Texas, sales

office received a phone call. "This is Joseph Jones," the caller announced. "I'm in

Business Development at corporate. I'll be in to, for the week, at the Driskill

Hotel. I'd like to have you set me up with a temporary account so I can access my

email without making a long distance call."

"Let me get that name again, and give me your employee number," the sys admin

said. The false Jones gave the number and went on, "Do you have any high speed

dial-up numbers.

"Hold on, buddy. I gotta verify you in the database." After a bit, he said, "Okay,

Joe. Tell me, what's your building number?" The attacker had done his

homework and had the answer ready

MITNICK MESSAGE

Don't rely on network safeguards and firewalls to protect your information. Look

to your most vulnerable spot. You'll usually find that vulnerability lies in your

people.

"Okay," the sys admin told him, "you convinced me."

It was as simple as that. The sys admin had verified the name Joseph Jones, the

department, and the employee number, and "Joe" had given the right answer to

the test question. "Your username's going to be the same as your corporate one,

jbjones," the sys admin said, "and I'm giving you an initial password of

'changeme.'"

Analyzing the Con

With a couple of phone calls and fifteen minutes of time, the attacker had gained

access to the company's wide area network. This was a company that, like many,

had what I refer to as candy security, after a description first used by two Bell

Labs researchers, Steve Bellovin and Steven Cheswick. They described such

security as "a hard crunchy shell with a oft chewy center" - like an M&M candy..The outer shell, the firewall, Bellovin and Cheswick argued, is not sufficient

protection, because once an intruder is able to circumvent it, the internal

computer systems have soft, chewy security. Most of the time, they are

inadequately protected.

This story fits the definition. With a dial-up number and an account, the attacker

didn't even have to bother trying to defeat an Internet firewall, and, once inside,

he was easily able to compromise most of the systems on the internal network.

Through my sources, I understand this exact ruse was worked on one of the

largest computer software manufacturers in the world. You would think the

systems administrators in such a company would be trained to detect this type of

ruse. But in my experience, nobody is completely safe if a social engineer is

clever and persuasive enough.

LINGO

CANDY SECURITY A term coined by Bellovin and Cheswick of Bell Labs to

describe a security scenario where the outer perimeter, such as firewall, is strong,

but the infrastructure behind it is weak. The term refers to M&M candy, which

has a hard outer shell and soft center.

LINGO

SPEAKEASY SECURITY Security that relies on knowing where desired

information is, and using a word or name to gain access to that information or

computer system.

SPEAKEASY SECURITY

In the old days of speakeasies - those Prohibition-era nightclubs where so-called

bathtub gin flowed--a would-be customer gained admission by showing up at the

door and knocking. After a few moments, a small flap in the door would swing

open and a tough, intimidating face would peer out. If the visitor was in the

know, he would speak the name of some frequent patron of the place ("Joe sent

me" was often enough), whereupon the bouncer inside would unlatch the door

and let him in.

The real trick lay in knowing the location of the speakeasy because the door was

unmarked, and the owners didn't exactly hang out neon signs to mark their

presence. For the most part, just showing up at the right place was about all it

took to get in. The same degree of safekeeping is, unhappily, practiced widely in

the corporate world, providing a level of non protection that I call speakeasy

security..I Saw It at the Movies

Here's an illustration from a favorite movie that many people will remember. In

Three Days of the Condor the central character, Turner (played by Robert

Redford), works for a small research firm contracted by the CIA. One day he

comes back from a lunch run to find that all his co workers have been gunned

down. He's left to figure out who has done this and why, all the while knowing

that the bad guys, whoever they are, are looking for him.

Late in the story, Turner manages to get the phone number of one the bad guys.

But who is this person, and how can Turner pin down his location? He's in luck:

The screenwriter, David Rayfiel, has happily given Turner a background that

includes training as a telephone lineman with the Army Signal Corps, making

him knowledgeable about techniques and practices of the phone company. With

the bad guy's phone number in hand, Turner knows exactly what to do. In the

screenplay, the scene reads like this:

TURNER RECONNECTS and TAPS OUT ANOTHER NUMBER.

RING! RING! Then:

WOMAN'S VOICE (FILTER) CNA, Mrs. Coleman speaking.

TURNER (into test set)

This is Harold Thomas, Mrs. Coleman. Customer Service.

CNA on 202-555-7389, please.

WOMAN'S VOICE (FILTER) One moment, please. (almost at once)

Leonard Atwood, 765 MacKensie Lane, Chevy Chase, Maryland.

Ignoring the fact that the screenwriter mistakenly uses a Washington, D.C., area

code for a Maryland address, can you spot what just happened here?

Turner, because of his training as a telephone lineman, knew what number to dial

in order to reach a phone company office called CNA, the Customer Name and

Address bureau. CNA is set up for the convenience of installers and other

authorized phone company personnel. An installer could call CNA, and give

them a phone number. The CNA clerk wouldrespond by providing the name of

the person the phone belongs to andhis address.

Fooling the Phone Company

In the real world, the phone number for CNA is a closely guarded secret..Although the phone companies finally caught on and these days are less

generous about handing out information so readily, at the time they operated

on a variation of speakeasy security that security professionals call security

through obscurity. They presumed that anybody who called CNA and knew the

proper lingo ("Customer service. CNA on 555-1234, please for example) was a

person authorized to have the information.

LINGO

SECURITY THROUGH OBSCURITY An ineffective method of computer

security that relies on keeping secret the details of how the system works

(protocols, algorithms, and internal systems). Security through obscurity relies on

the false assumption that no one outside a trusted group of people will be able to

circumvent the system.

MITNICK MESSGAE

Security through obscurity does not have any effect in blocking social

engineering attacks. Every computer system in the world has at least one human

that use it. So, if the attacker is able to manipulate people who use the systems,

the obscurity of the system is irrelevant.

There was no need to verify or identify oneself, no need to give an employee

number, no need for a password that was changed daily. If you knew the number

to call and you sounded authentic, then you must be entitled to the information.

That was not a very solid assumption on the part of the telephone company. Their

only effort at security was to change the phone number on l periodic basis, at

least once a year. Even so, the current number at any particular moment was very

widely known among phone phreaks, who delighted in taking advantage of this

convenient source of information and in sharing the how-to-do-it with their

fellow phreaks. The CN,' Bureau trick was one of the first things I learned when I

was in to the hobby of phone phreaking as a teenager.

Throughout the world of business and government, speakeasy security. is still

prevalent. It's likely that about your company's departments, people, and lingo.

Sometimes les to than that: Sometimes an internal phone number is all it takes.

THE CARELESS COMPUTER MANAGER

Though many employees in organizations are negligent, unconcerned, or unaware

of security dangers, you'd expect someone with the title manager in the computer

center of a Fortune 500 corporation to be thoroughly knowledgeable about best

security practices, right?.You would not expect a computer center manager - someone who is part of his

company's Information Technology department - to fall victim to a simplistic and

obvious social engineering con game. Especially not the social engineer is hardly

more than a kid, barely out of his teens. But sometimes your expectations can be

wrong.

Tuning In

Years ago it was an amusing pastime for many people to keep a radio tuned to the

local police or fire department frequencies, listening in on the occasional highly

charged conversations about a bank robbery in progress, an office building on

fire, or a high-speed chase as the event unfolded. The radio frequencies used by

law enforcement agencies and fire departments used to be available in books at

the corner bookstore; today they're provided in listings on the Web, and from a

book you can buy at Radio Shack frequencies for local, county, state, and, in

some cases, even federal agencies.

Of course, it wasn't just the curious who were listening in. Crooks robbing a store

in the middle of the night could tune in to hear if a police car was being

dispatched to the location. Drug dealers could keep a check on activities of the

local Drug Enforcement Agency agents. An arsonist could enhance his sick

pleasure by lighting a blaze and then listening to all the radio traffic while

firemen struggled to put it out.

Over recent years developments in computer technology have made it possible to

encrypt voice messages. As engineers found ways to cram more and more

computing power onto a single microchip, they began to build small, encrypted

radios for law enforcement that kept the bad guys and the curious from listening

in.

Danny the Eavesdropper

A scanner enthusiast and skilled hacker we'll call Danny decided to see if he

couldn't find a way to get his hands on the super-secret encryption software - the

source code - from one of the top manufacturers of secure radio systems. He was

hoping a study of the code would enable him to learn how to eavesdrop on law

enforcement, and possibly also use the technology so that even the most powerful

government agencies would find it difficult to monitor his conversations with his

friends.

The Dannys of the shadowy world of hackers belong to a special category

that falls somewhere in between the merely-curious but-entirely- benign and the

dangerous. Dannys have the knowledge of the expert, combined with the.mischievous hacker's desire to break into systems and networks for the

intellectual challenge and for the pleasure of gaining insight into how technology

works. But their electronic breaking-and- entering stunts are just that--stunts.

These folks, these benign hackers, illegally enter sites for the sheer fun and

exhilaration of proving they can do it. They don't steal anything, they don't make

any money from their exploits; they don't destroy any files, disrupt any network

connections, or crash any computer system. The mere fact of their being there,

snaring copies of files and searching emails for passwords behind the backs of

curity and network administrators, tweaks the noses of the people responsible for

keeping out intruders like them. The one-upmanship is a big part of the

satisfaction.

In keeping with this profile, our Danny wanted to examine the details of his target

company's most closely guarded product just to satisfy his own burning curiosity

and to admire whatever clever innovations the manufacturer might have come up

with.

The product designs were, needless to say, carefully guarded trade secrets, as

precious and protected as just about anything in the company's possession. Danny

knew that. And he didn't care a bit. After all, it was just some big, nameless

company.

But how to get the software source code? As it turned out, grabbing the crown

jewels of the company's Secure Communications Group proved to be all too easy,

even though the company was one of those that used two- factor authentication,

an arrangement under which people are required to use not one but two separate

identifiers to prove their identity.

Here's an example you're probably already familiar with. When your renewal

credit card arrives, you're asked to phone the issuing company to let them know

that the card is in possession of the intended customer, and not somebody who

stole the envelope from the mail. The instructions with the card these days

generally tell you to call from home. When you call, software at the credit card

company analyzes the ANI, the automatic number identification, which is

provided by the telephone switch on toll- free calls that the credit card company

is paying for.

A computer at the credit card company uses the calling party's number provided

by the ANI, and matches that number against the company's database of

cardholders. By the time the clerk comes on the line, her or his display shows

information from the database giving details about the customer. So the clerk

already knows the call is coming from the home of a customer; that's one form of

authentication..LINGO

TWO-FACTOR AUTHENTICATION The use of two different types of

authentication to verify identity. For example, a person might have to identify

himself by calling from a certain identifiable location and knowing a password.

The clerk then picks an item from the information displayed about you - most

often social security number, date of birth, or mother's maiden name - and asks

you for this piece of information. If you give the right answer, that's a second

form of authentication - based on information you should know.

At the company manufacturing the secure radio systems in our story, every

employee with computer access had their usual account name and password, but

in addition was provided with a small electronic device called Secure ID. This is

what's called a time-based token. These devices come in two types: One is about

half the size of a credit card but a little thicker; another is small enough that

people simply attach it to their key chains.

Derived from the world of cryptography, this particular gadget has a small

window that displays a series of six digits. Every sixty seconds, the display

changes to show a different six-digit number. When an authorized person needs

to access the network from offsite, she must first identify herself as an authorized

user by typing in her secret PIN and the digits displayed on her token device.

Once verified by the internal system, she then authenticates with her account

name and password.

For the young hacker Danny to get at the source code he so coveted, he would

have to not only compromise some employee's account name and password (not

much of a challenge for the experienced social engineer) but also get around the

time-based token.

Defeating the two-factor authentication of a time-based token combined with a

user's secret PIN code sounds like a challenge right out of Mission Impossible.

But for social engineers, the challenge is similar to that aced by a poker player

who has more than the usual skill at reading his opponents. With a little luck,

when he sits down at a table he knows he's likely to walk away with a large pile

of other people's money.

Storming the Fortress

Danny began by doing his homework. Before long he had managed to put

together enough pieces to masquerade as a real employee. He had an employee's

name, department, phone number, and employee number, as well as the

manager's name and phone number..Now was the calm before the storm. Literally. Going by the plan he had worked

out, Danny needed one more thing before he could take the next step, and it was

something he had no control over: He needed a snow-storm. Danny needed a

little help from Mother Nature in the form of weather so bad that it would keep

workers from getting into the office. In the winter in South Dakota, where the

manufacturing plant in question was located, anyone hoping for bad weather did

not have very long to wait. On Friday night, a storm arrived. What had begun as

snow quickly turned to freezing rain so that, by morning, the roads were coated

with a slick, dangerous sheet of ice. For Danny, this was a perfect opportunity.

He telephoned the plant, asked for-the computer room and reached one of the

worker bees of IT, a computer operator who announced himself as Roger

Kowalski.

Giving the name of the real employee he had obtained, Danny said, "This is Bob

Billings. I work in the Secure Communications Group. I'm at home right now and

I can't drive in because of the storm. And the problem is that I need to access my

workstation and the server from home, and I left my Secure ID in my desk. Can

you go fetch it for me? Or can somebody? And then read off my code when I

need to get in? Because my team has a critical deadline and there's no way I can

get my work done. And there's no way I can get to the office--the roads are much

too dangerous up my way.

The computer operator said, "I can't leave the Computer Center." Danny jumped

right in: "Do you have a Secure ID yourself?."

"There's one here in the Computer Center," he said. "We keep one for the

operators in case of an emergency."

"Listen," Danny said. "Can you do me a big favor? When I need to dial

into the network, can you let me borrow your Secure ID? Just until it's safe to

drive in."

"Who are you again?" Kowalski asked.

"Who do you work for.

"For Ed Trenton."

"Oh, yeah, I know him."

When he's liable to be faced with tough sledding, a good social engineer does

more than the usual amount of research. "I'm on the second floor," Danny went

on. "Next to Roy Tucker."

He knew that name, as well. Danny went back to work on him. "It'd be much

easier just to go to my desk and fetch my Secure ID for me.".Danny was pretty certain the guy would not buy into this. First of all, he would

not want to leave in the middle of his shift to go traipsing down corridors and up

staircases to some distant part of the building. He would also not want to have to

paw through someone else's desk, violating somebody's personal space. No, it

was a safe bet he wouldn't want to do that.

Kowalski didn't want to say no to a guy who needed some help, but he didn't

want to say yes and get in trouble, either. So he sidestepped the decision: I'll have

to ask my boss. Hang on." He put the phone down, and Danny could hear him

pick up another phone, put in the call, and explain the request. Kowalski then did

something unexplainable: He actually vouched for the man using the name Bob

Billings. "I know him," he told his manager. "He works for Ed Trenton. Can we

let him use the Secure ID in the Computer Center' Danny, holding on to the

phone, was amazed to overhear this extraordinary and unexpected support for his

cause. He couldn't believe his ears or his luck.

After another couple of moments, Kowalski came back on the line and said, "My

manager wants to talk to you himself," and gave him the man's name and cell

phone number.

Danny called the manager and went through the whole story one more time,

adding details about the project he was working or and why his product team

needed to meet a critical deadline. "It'd be easier if someone just goes and

fetches my card," he said. "I don't think the desk is locked, it should be there in

my upper left drawer."

"Well," said the manager, "just for the weekend, I think we can let you use the

one in the Computer Center. I'll tell the guys on duty that when you call, they

should read off the random-access code for you," and he gave him the PIN

number to use with it.

For the whole weekend, every time Danny wanted to get into the corporate

computer system, he only had to call the Computer Center and ask them to read

off the six digits displayed on the Secure ID token.

An Inside Job

Once he was inside the company's computer system, then what? How would

Danny find his way to the server with the software he wanted? He had already

prepared for this.

Many computer users are familiar with newsgroups, that extensive set of

electronic bulletin boards where people can post questions that other people

answer, or find virtual companions who share an interest in music, computers, or

any of hundreds of other topics..What few people realize when they post any message on a newsgroup site is that

their message remains on line and available for years. Google, for example, now

maintains an archive of seven hundred million messages, some dating back

twenty years! Danny started by going to the Web address

http://groups.google.com.

As search terms, Danny entered "encryption radio communications" and the

name of the company, and found a years-old message on the subject from an

employee. It was a posting that had been made back when the company was first

developing the product, probably long before police departments and federal

agencies had considered scrambling radio signals.

The message contained the sender's signature, giving not just the man's name,

Scott Press, but his phone number and even the name of his workgroup, the

Secure Communications Group.

Danny picked up the phone and dialed the number. It seemed like a long shot--

would he still be working in the same organization years later? Would he be at

work on such a stormy weekend? The phone rang once, twice, three times, and

then a voice came on the line. "This is Scott," he said.

Claiming to be from the company's IT Department, Danny manipulated Press (in

one of the ways now familiar to you from earlier chapters) into revealing the

names of the servers he used for development work. These were the servers that

could be expected to hold the source code containing the proprietary encryption

algorithm and firmware used in the company's secure radio products.

Danny was moving closer and closer, and his excitement was building. He was

anticipating the rush, the great high he always felt when he succeeded at

something he knew only a very limited number of people could accomplish.

Still, he wasn't home free yet. For the rest of the weekend he'd be able to get into

the company's network whenever he wanted to, thanks to that cooperative

computer center manager. And he knew which servers he wanted to access. But

when he dialed in, the terminal server he logged on to would not permit him to

connect to the Secure Communications Group development systems. There must

have been an internal firewall or router protecting the computer systems of that

group. He'd have to find some other way in.

The next step took nerve: Danny called back to Kowalski in Computer

Operations and complained "My server won't let me connect," and told the IT

guy, "I need you to set me up with an account on one of the computers in your

department so I can use Telnet to connect to my system.".The manager had already approved disclosing the access code displayed on the

time-based token, so this new request didn't seem unreasonable. Kowalski set up

a temporary account and password on one of the Operation Center's computers,

and told Danny to "call me back when you don't need it any more and I'll remove

it."

Once logged into the temporary account, Danny was able to connect over the

network to the Secure Communications Group's computer systems. After an hour

of on-line searching for a technical vulnerability that would give him access to a

main development server, he hit the jackpot. Apparently the system or network

administrator wasn't vigilant in keeping up with the latest news on security bugs

in the operating system that allowed remote access. But Danny was.

Within a short time he had located the source code files that he was after and was

transferring them remotely to an e-commerce site that offered free storage space.

On this site, even if the files were ever discovered, they would never be traced

back to him.

He had one final step before signing off: the methodical process of erasing his

tracks. He finished before the Jay Leno show had gone off the air for the night.

Danny figured this had been one very good weekend's work. And he had never

had to put himself personally at risk. It was an intoxicating thrill, even better than

snowboarding or skydiving.

Danny got drunk that night, not on scotch, gin, beer, or sake, but on his sense of

power and accomplishment as he poured through the files he had stolen, closing

in on the elusive, extremely secret radio software.

Analyzing the Con

As in the previous story, this ruse only worked because one company employee

was all too willing to accept at face value that a caller was really the employee he

claimed to be. That eagerness to help out a co worker with a problem is, on the

one hand, part of what greases the wheels of industry, and part of what makes the

employees of some companies more pleasant to work with than employees of

others. But on the other hand, this helpfulness can be a major vulnerability that a

social engineer will attempt to exploit.

One bit of manipulation Danny used was delicious: When he made the request

that someone get his Secure ID from his desk, he kept saying he wanted

somebody to "fetch" it for him. Fetch is a command you give your dog. Nobody

wants to be told to fetch something. With that one word, Danny made it all the

more certain the request would be refused and some other solution accepted

instead, which was exactly what he wanted..The Computer Center operator, "Kowalski, was taken in by Danny dropping the

names of people Kowalski happened to know. But why would Kowalski's

manager - an IT manager, no less - allow some stranger access to the company's

internal network? Simply because the call for help can be a powerful, persuasive

tool in the social engineer's arsenal.

MITNICK MESSAGE

This story goes to show that time-based tokens and similar forms of

authentication are not a defense against the wily social engineer. The only

defense is a conscientious employee who follows security policies and

understands how others can maliciously influence his behavior.

Could something like that ever happen in your company? Has it already?

PREVENTING THE CON

It seems to be an often-repeated element in these stories that an attacker arranges

to dial in to a computer network from outside the company, without the person

who helps him taking sufficient measures to verify that the caller is really an

employee and entitled to the access. Why do I return to this theme so often?

Because it truly is a factor in so many social engineering attacks. For the social

engineer, it's the easiest way to reach his goal. Why should an attacker spend

hours trying to break in, when he can do it instead with a simple phone call?

One of the most powerful methods for the social engineer to carry out this kind

of attack is the simple ploy of pretending to need help - an approach frequently

used by attackers. You don't want to stop your employees from being helpful to

co workers or customers, so you need to arm them with specific verification

procedures to use with anybody making a request for computer access or

confidential information. That way they can be helpful to those who deserve to be

helped, but at the same time protect the organization's information assets and

computer systems.

Company security procedures need to spell out in detail what kind of verification

mechanisms should be used in various circumstances. Chapter 17 provides a

detailed list of procedures, but here are some guidelines to consider:

One good way to verify the identity of a person making a request is to call the

phone number listed in the company directory for that person. If the person

making the request is actually an attacker, the verification call will either let you

speak to the real person on the phone while the imposter is on hold, or you will

reach the employee's voice mail so that you can listen to the sound of his voice,

and compare it to thespeech of the attacker..If employee numbers are used in your company for verifying identity, then those

numbers have to be treated as sensitive information, carefully guarded and not

given out to strangers. The same goes for all other kinds of internal identifiers,

such as internal telephone numbers, departmental billing identifiers, and even

email addresses.

Corporate training should call everyone's attention to the common practice of

accepting unknown people as legitimate employees on the grounds that they

sound authoritative or knowledgeable. Just because somebody knows a company

practice or uses internal terminology is no reason to assume that his identity

doesn't need to be verified in other ways.

Security officers and system administrators must not narrow their focus so that

they are only alert to how security-conscious everyone else is being. They also

need to make sure they themselves are following the same rules, procedures, and

practices.

Passwords and the like must, of course, never be shared, but the restriction

against sharing is even more important with time-based tokens and other secure

forms of authentication. It should be a matter of common sense that sharing any

of these items violates the whole point of the company's having installed the

systems. Sharing means there can be no accountability. If a security incident

takes place or something goes wrong, you won't be able to determine who the

responsible party is.

As I reiterate throughout this book, employees need to be familiar with social

engineering strategies and methods to thoughtfully analyze requests they receive.

Consider using role-playing as a standard part of security training, so that

employees can come to a better understanding of how the social engineer works..Chapter 7

Phony Sites and Dangerous Attachments

There's an old saying that you never get something for nothing,

Still, the ploy of offering something for free continues to be a big draw for both

legitimate ("But wait--there's more! Call right now and we'll throw in a set of

knives and a popcorn popper!") and not-so- legitimate ("Buy one acre of

swampland in Florida and get a second acre free!") businesses.

And most of us are so eager to get something free that we may be distracted from

thinking clearly about the offer or the promise being made.

We know the familiar warning, "buyer beware," but it's time to heed another

warning: Beware of come-on email attachments and free software. The savvy

attacker will use nearly any means to break into the corporate network, including

appealing to our natural desire to get a free gift. Here are a few examples.

WOULDN'T YOU LIKE A FREE (BLANK)?"

Just as viruses have been a curse to mankind and medical practitioners since the

beginning of time, so the aptly named computer virus represents a similar curse

to users of technology. The computer viruses that get most of the attention and

end up in the spotlight, not coincidentally, do the most damage. These are the

product of computer vandals.

Computer nerds turned malicious, computer vandals strive to show off how

clever they are. Sometimes their acts are like a rite of initiation, meant to

impress older and more experienced hackers. These people are motivated to

create a worm or virus intended to inflict damage. If their work destroys files,

trashes entire hard drives, and emails itself to thousands of unsuspecting people,

vandals puff with pride at their accomplishment. If the virus causes enough chaos

that newspapers write about it and the network news broadcasts warn against it,

so much the better.

Much has been written about vandals and their viruses; books, software

programs, and entire companies have been created to offer protection, and we

won't deal here with the defenses against their technical attacks. Our interest at

the moment is less in the destructive acts of the vandal than in the more targeted

efforts of his distant cousin, the social engineer.

It Came in the Email

You probably receive unsolicited emails every day that carry advertising

messages or offer a free something-or-other that you neither need nor want. You.know the kind. They promise investment advice, discounts on computers,

televisions, cameras, vitamins, or travel, offers for credit cards you don't need, a

device that will let you receive pay television channels free, ways to improve

your health or your sex life, and on and on.

But every once in a while an offer pops up in your electronic mailbox for

something that catches your eye. Maybe it's a free game, an offer of photos of

your favorite star, a free calendar program, or inexpensive share" ware that will

protect your computer against viruses. Whatever the offer, the email directs you

to download the file with the goodies that the message has convinced you to try.

Or maybe you receive a message with a subject line that reads Don, I miss you,"

or "Anna, why haven't you written me," or "Hi, Tim, here's the sexy photo I

promised you." This couldn't be junk advertising mail, you think, because it has

your own name on it and sounds so personal. So you open the attachment to see

the photo or read the message.

All of these actions--downloading software you learned about from an

advertising email, clicking on a link that takes you to a site you haven't heard of

before, opening an attachment from someone you don't really know--are

invitations to trouble. Sure, most of the time what you get is exactly what you

expected, or at worst something disappointing or offensive, but harmless. But

sometimes what you get is the handiwork of a vandal.

Sending malicious code to your computer is only a small part of the attack. The

attacker needs to persuade you to download the attachment for the attack to

succeed.

NOTE

One type of program know in the computer underground as a RAT, or Remote

Access Trojan, gives the attacker full access to your computer, just as if he were

sitting at your keyboard.

The most damaging forms of malicious code - worms with names like Love

Letter, SirCam, and Anna Kournikiva, to name a few - have all relied on social

engineering techniques of deception and taking advantage of our desire to get

something for nothing in order to be spread. The worm arrives as an attachment

to an email that offers something tempting, such as confidential information, free

pornography, or - a very clever ruse - a message saying that the attachment is the

receipt for some expensive item you supposedly ordered. This last ploy leads you

to open the attachment for fear your credit card has been charged for an item you

didn't order..It's astounding how many people fall for these tricks; even after being told and

told again about the dangers of opening email attachments, awareness of the

danger fades over time, leaving each of us vulnerable.

Spotting Malicious Software

Another kind of malware - short for malicious software - puts a program onto

your computer that operates without your knowledge or consent, or performs a

task without your awareness. Malware may look innocent enough, may even be a

Word document or PowerPoint presentation, or any program that has macro

functionality, but it will secretly install an unauthorized program. For example,

malware may be a version of the Trojan Horse talked about in Chapter 6. Once

this software is installed on your machine, it can feed every keystroke you type

back to the attacker, including all your passwords and credit card numbers.

There are two other types of malicious software you may find shocking.

One can feed the attacker every word you speak within range of your computer

microphone, even when you think the microphone is turned off. Worse, if you

have a Web cam attached to your computer, an attacker using a variation of this

technique may be able to capture everything that takes place in front of your

terminal, even when you think the camera is off, day or night.

LINGO

MALWARE Slang for malicious software, a computer program, such as a virus,

worm, or Trojan Horse, that performs damaging tasks.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Beware of geeks bearing gifts, otherwise your company might endure the same

fate as the city of Troy. When in doubt, to avoid an infection, use protection.

A hacker with a malicious sense of humor might try to plant a little program

designed to be wickedly annoying on your computer. For example, it might make

your CD drive tray keep popping open, or the file you're working on keep

minimizing. Or it might cause an audio file to play a scream at full volume in the

middle of the night. None of these is much fun when you're trying to get sleep or

get work done.., but at least they don't do any lasting damage.

MESSAGE FROM A FRIEND

The scenarios can get even worse, despite your precautions. Imagine: You've

decided not to take any chances. You will no longer download any files except

from secure sites that you know and trust, such as SecurityFocus.com or

Amazon.com. You no longer click on links in email.from unknown sources. You no longer open attachments in any email that you

were not expecting. And you check your browser page to make sure there is a

secure site symbol on every site you visit for e-commerce transactions or to

exchange confidential information.

And then one day you get an email from a friend or business associate that carries

an attachment. Couldn't be anything malicious if it comes from someone you

know well, right? Especially since you would know who to blame if your

computer data were damaged.

You open the attachment, and... BOOM! You just got hit with a worm or Trojan

Horse. Why would someone you know do this to you? Because some things are

not as they appear. You've read about this: the worm that gets onto someone's

computer, and then emails itself to everyone in that person's address book. Each

of those people gets an email from someone he knows and trusts, and each of

those trusted emails contains the worm, which propagates itself like the ripples

from a stone thrown into a still pond.

The reason this technique is so effective is that it follows the theory of killing two

birds with one stone: The ability to propagate to other unsuspecting victims, and

the appearance that it originated from a trusted person.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Man has invented many wonderful things that have changed the world and our

way of life. But for every good use of technology, whether a computer,

telephone, or the Internet, someone will always find a way to abuse it for his or

her own purposes.

It's a sad fact of life in the current state of technology that you may get an email

from someone close to you and still have to wonder if it's safe to open.

VARIATIONS ON A THEME

In this era of the Internet, there is a kind of fraud that involves misdirecting you

to a Web site that is not what you expected. This happens regularly, and it takes a

variety of forms. This example, which is based on an actual scam perpetrated on

the Internet, is representative.

Merry Christmas. . .

A retired insurance salesman named Edgar received an email one day from

PayPal, a company that offers a fast and convenient way of making online

payments. This kind of service is especially handy when a person in one part of

the country (or the world, for that matter) is buying an item from an individual he.doesn't know. PayPal charges the purchaser's credit card and transfers the money

directly to the seller's account. As a collector of antique glass jars Edgar did a lot

of business through the on-line auction company eBay. He used PayPal often,

sometimes several times a week. So Edgar was interested when he received an

email in the holiday season of 2001 that seemed to be from PayPal, offering him

a reward for updating his PayPal account. The message read:

Season's Greetings Valued PayPal Customer;

As the New Year approaches and as we all get ready to move a year ahead,

PayPal would like to give you a $5 credit to your account!

All you have to do to claim your $5 gift from us is update your information on

our secure Pay Pal site by January 1st, 2002. A year brings a lot of changes, by

updating your information with us you will allow for us to continue providing

you and our valued customer service with excellent service and in the meantime,

keep our records straight!

To update your information now and to receive $5 in your PayPal account

instantly, click this link:

http://www, paypal -secure. com/cgi bin

Thank you for using PayPal.com and helping us grow to be the largest of our

kind! Sincerely wishing you a very "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year,"

PayPal Team

A Note about E.commerce Web Sites

You probably know people who are reluctant to buy goods on line, even from

brand-name companies such as Amazon and eBay, or the Web sites of Old Navy,

Target, or Nike. In a way, they're right to be suspicious. If your browser uses

today's standard of 128-bit encryption, the information you send to any secure

site goes out from your computer encrypted. This data could be unencrypted with

a lot of effort, but probably is not breakable in a reasonable amount of time,

except perhaps by the National Security Agency (and the NSA, so far 98 as we

know, has not shown any interest in stealing credit card numbers of American

citizens or trying to find out who is ordering sexy videotapes or kinky

underwear).

These encrypted files could actually be broken by anyone with the time and

resources. But really, what fool would go to all that effort to steal one credit card

number when many e-commerce companies make the mistake of storing all their

customer financial information unencrypted in their databases? Worse, a number.of e-commerce companies that use a particular SQL database software badly

compound the problem: They have never changed the default system

administrator password for the program. When they took the software out of the

box, the password was "null," and it's still "null" today. So the contents of the

database are available to anyone on the Internet who decides to try to connect to

the database server. These sites are under attack all the time and information does

get stolen, without anyone being the wiser,

On the other hand, the same people who won't buy on the Internet because they're

afraid of having their credit card information stolen have no problem buying

with that same credit card in a brick-and- mortar store, or paying for lunch,

dinner, or drinks with the card

even in a back-street bar or restaurant they wouldn't take their mother to. Credit

card receipts get stolen from these places all the time, or fished out of trash bins

in the back alley. And any unscrupulous clerk or waiter can jot down your name

and card info, or use a gadget readily available on the Internet, a card-swiping

device that stores data from any credit card passed through it, for later retrieval.

There are some hazards to shopping on line, but it's probably as safe as shopping

in a bricks-and-mortar store. And the credit card companies offer you the same

protection when using your card on line--if any fraudulent charges get made to

the account, you're only responsible for the first $50.

So in my opinion, fear of shopping online is just another misplaced

worry.

Edgar didn't notice any of the several tell-tale signs that something was wrong

with this email (for example, the semicolon after the greeting line, and the

garbled text about "our valued customer service with excellent service"). He

clicked on the link, entered the information requested - name, address, phone

number, and credit card information - and sat. back to wait for the five-dollar

credit to show up on his next credit-card bill. What showed up instead was a list

of charges for items he never purchased.

Analyzing the Con

Edgar had been taken in by a commonplace Internet scam. It's a scam that comes

in a variety of forms. One of them (detailed in Chapter 9) involves a decoy login

screen created by the attacker that looks identical to the real thing. The difference

is that the phony screen doesn't give access to the computer system that the user

is trying to reach, but instead feeds his username and password to the hacker.

Edgar had been taken in by a scam in which the crooks had registered a Web site

with the name "paypal-secure.com"- which sounds as if it should have been a.secure page on the legitimate PayPal site, but it isn't. When he entered

information on that site, the attackers got just what they wanted.

MITNICK MESSAGE

While not foolproof (no security is), whenever visiting a site that requests

information you consider private, always ensure that the connection is

authenticated and encrypted. And even more important, do not automatically

click Yes in any dialog box that may indicate a security issue, such as an invalid,

expired, or revoked digital certificate.

VARIATIONS ON THE VARIATION

How many other ways are there to deceive computer users into going to a bogus

Web site where they provide confidential information? I don't suppose anyone

has a valid, accurate answer, but "lots and lots" will serve the purpose.

The Missing Link

One trick pops up regularly: Sending out an email that offers a tempting reason to

visit a site, and provides a link for going directly to it. Except that the link doesn't

take you to the site you think you're going to, because the link actually only

resembles a link for that site. Here's another exam- pie that has actually been used

on the Internet, again involving misuse of the name PayPal:

www. PayPai. com

At a quick glance, this looks as if it says PayPal. Even if the victim notices, he

may think it's just a slight defect in the text that makes the "I" of Pal look like an

"i." And who would notice at a glance that:

www. PayPal. com

uses the number 1 instead of a lowercase letter L? There are enough people who

accept misspellings and other misdirection to make this gambit continually

popular with credit card bandits. When people go to the phony site, it looks like

the site they expected to go to, and they blithely enter their credit card

information. To set up one of these scares, an attacker only needs to register the

phony domain name, send out his emails, and wait for suckers to show up, ready

to be cheated.

In mid-2002, I received an email, apparently part of a mass mailing that was

marked as being from "Ebay@ebay.com." The message is shown in Figure 8.1..Figure 8.1. The link in this or any other email should be used with caution.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

----------------

msg: Dear eBay User,

It has become very noticeable that another party has been corrupting your eBay

account and has violated our User Agreement policy listed:

4. Bidding and Buying

You are obligated to complete the transaction with the seller if you purchase an

item through one of our fixed price formats or are the highest bidder as described

below. If you are the highest bidder at the end of an auction (meeting the

applicable minimum bid or reserve requirements) and your bid is accepted by the

seller, you are obligated to complete the transaction with the seller, or the

transaction is prohibited by law or by this Agreement.

You received this notice from eBay because it has come to our attention that your

current account has caused interruptions with other eBay members and eBay

requires immediate verification for your account. Please verify your account or

the account may become disabled. Click Here To Verify Your Account -

http://error ebay.tripod.com

Designated trademarks and brands are the property of their respective owners,

eBay and the eBay logo are trademarks of eBay Inc.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

-------------------

Victims who clicked on the link went to a Web page that looked very much like

an eBay page. In fact, the page was well designed, with an authentic eBay logo,

and "Browse," "Sell" and other navigation links that, if clicked, took the visitor to

the actual eBay site. There was also a security logo in the bottom right corner. To

deter the savvy victim, the designer had even used HTML encryption to mask

where the user-provided information was being sent.

It was an excellent example of a malicious computer-based social engineering

attack. Still, it was not without several flaws.

The email message was not well written; in particular, the paragraph beginning

"You received this notice" is clumsy and inept (the people responsible for these

hoaxes never hire a professional to edit their copy, and it always shows). Also,

anybody who was paying close attention would have become suspicious about.eBay asking for the visitor's PayPal information; there is no reason eBay would

ask a customer for this private information involving a different company.

And anyone knowledgeable about the Internet would probably recognize that the

hyperlink connects not to the eBay domain but to tripod.com, which is a free

Web hosting service. This was a dead giveaway that the email was not legitimate.

Still, I bet a lot of people entered their information, including a credit card

number, onto this page.

NOTE

Why are people allowed to register deceptive or inapproprate domain names?.

Because under current law and on-line policy, anyone can register any site names

that' not already in use.

Companies try to fight this use of copycat addresses, but consider what they're up

against. General Motors filed suit against a company that registered

f**kgeneralmotors.com (but without the asterisks) and pointed the URL to

General Motor's Web site. GM lost.

Be Alert

As individual users of the Internet, we all need to be alert, making a conscious

decision about when it's okay to enter personal information, passwords, account

numbers, PINs, and the like.

How many people do you know who could tell you whether a particular Internet

page they're looking at meets the requirements of a secure page? How many

employees in your company know what to look for?

Everyone who uses the Internet should know about the little symbol that often

appears somewhere on a Web page and looks like a drawing of a padlock. They

should know that when the hasp is closed, the site has been certified as being

secure. When the hasp is open or the lock icon is missing, the Web site is not

authenticated as genuine, and any information transmitted is in the clear--that is,

unencrypted.

However, an attacker who manages to compromise administrative privileges on a

company computer may be able to modify or patch the operating system code to

change the user's perception of what is really happening. For example, the

programming instructions in the browser software that indicate a Web site's

digital certificate is invalid can be modified to bypass the check. Or the system

could be modified with something called a root kit, installing one or more back

doors at the operating system level, which are harder to detect..A secure connection authenticates the site as genuine, and encrypts the

information being communicated, so an attacker cannot make use of any data that

is intercepted. Can you trust any Web site, even one that uses a secure

connection? No, because the site owner may not be vigilant about applying all the

necessary security patches, or forcing users or administrators to respect good

password practices. So you can't assume that any supposedly secure site is

invulnerable to attack.

LINGO

BACK DOOR A covert entry point that provides a secret way into a user's

computer that is unkown to the user. Also used by programmers while developing

a software program so that they can go into the program to fix problems

Secure HTTP (hypertext transfer protocol) or SSL (secure sockets layer) provides

an automatic mechanism that uses digital certificates not only to encrypt

information being sent to the distant site, but also to provide authentication (an

assurance that you are communicating with the genuine Web site). However, this

protection mechanism does not work for users who fail to pay attention to

whether the site name displayed in the address bar is in fact the correct address of

the site they're trying to access.

Another security issue, mostly ignored, appears as a warning message that says

something like "This site is not secure or the security certificate has expired. Do

you want to go to the site anyway?" Many Internet users don't understand the

message, and when it appears, they simply click Okay or Yes and go on with

their work, unaware that they may be on quicksand. Be warned: On a Web site

that does not use a secure protocol, you should never enter any confidential

information such as your address or phone number, credit card or bank account

numbers, or anything else you want to keep private.

Thomas Jefferson said maintaining our freedom required "eternal vigilance."

Maintaining privacy and security in a society that uses information as currency

requires no less.

Becoming Virus Savvy

A special note about virus software: It is essential for the corporate intranet, but

also essential for every employee who uses a computer. Beyond just having anti

virus software installed on their machines, users obviously need to have the

software turned on (which many people don't like because it inevitably slows

down some computer functions).

With anti virus software there's another important procedure to keep in.mind, as well: Keeping the virus definitions up to date. Unless your company is

set up to distribute software or updates over the network to every user, each

individual user must carry the responsibility of downloading the latest set of virus

definitions on his own. My personal recommendation is to have everyone set the

virus software preferences so that new virus definitions are automatically updated

every day.

LINGO

SECURE SOCKETS LAYER A protocol developed by Netscape that provides

authentication of both client and server in a secure communication on the

internet.

Simply put, you're vulnerable unless the virus definitions are updated regularly.

And even so, you're still not completely safe from viruses or worms that the anti

virus software companies don't yet know about or haven't yet published a

detection pattern file for.

All employees with remote access privileges from their laptops or home

computers need to have updated virus software and a personal firewall on those

machines at a minimum. A sophisticated attacker will look at the big picture to

seek out the weakest link, and that's where he'll attack. Reminding people with

remote computers regularly about the need for personal firewalls and updated,

active virus software is a corporate responsibility, because you can't expect that

individual workers, managers, sales people, and others remote from an IT

department will remember the dangers of leaving their computers unprotected.

Beyond these steps, I strongly recommend use of the less common, but no less

important, software packages that guard against Trojan Horse attacks, so-called

anti-Trojan software. At the time of this writing, two of the better-known

programs are The Cleaner (www.moosoft.com), and Trojan Defense Sweep

(www.diamondcs.com.au).

Finally, what is probably the most important security message of all for

companies that do not scan for dangerous emails at the corporate gateway: Since

we all tend to be forgetful or negligent about things that seem peripheral to

getting our jobs done, employees need to be reminded over and over again, in

different ways, about not opening email attachments unless they are certain that

the source is a person or organization they can trust. And management also needs

to remind employees that they must use active virus software and anti-Trojan

software that provides invaluable protection against the seemingly trustworthy

email that may contain a destructive payload..Chapter 8

Using Sympathy, Guilt, and Intimidation

As discussed in Chapter 15, a social engineer uses the psychology of influence to

lead his target to comply with his request. Skilled social engineers are very adept

at developing a ruse that stimulates emotions, such as fear, excitement, or guilt.

They do this by using psychological triggers--automatic mechanisms that lead

people to respond to requests without in-depth analysis of all the available

information.

We all want to avoid difficult situations for ourselves and others. Based on this

positive impulse, the attacker can play on a person's sympathy, make his victim

feel guilty, or use intimidation as a weapon.

Here are some graduate-school lessons in popular tactics that play on the

emotions.

A VISIT TO THE STUDIO

Have you ever noticed how some people can walk up to the guard at the door of,

say, a hotel ballroom where some meeting, private party, or book-launching

function is under way, and just walk past that person without being asked for his

ticket or pass?

In much the same way, a social engineer can talk his way into places that you

would not have thought possible - as the following story about the movie industry

makes clear.

The Phone Call

"Ron Hillyard's office, this is Dorothy."

"Dorothy, hi. My name is Kyle Bellamy. I've just come on board to work in

Animation Development on Brian Glassman's staff. You folks sure do things

different over here."

"I guess. I never worked on any other movie lot so I don't really know. What can

I do for you?"

"To tell you the truth, I'm feeling sort of stupid. I've got a writer coming over this

afternoon for a pitch session and I don't know who I'm supposed to talk to about

getting him onto the lot. The people over here in Brian's office are really nice but

I hate to keep bothering them, how do I do this, how do I do that. It's like I just

started junior high and can't find my way to the bathroom. You know what I

mean?".Dorothy laughed.

"You want to talk to Security. Dial 7, and then 6138. If you

get Lauren, tell her Dorothy said she should take good

care of you."

"Thanks, Dorothy. And if I can't find the men's room, I may call you back!"

They chuckled together over the idea, and hung up.

David Harold's Story

I love the movies and when I moved to Los Angeles, I thought I'd get to

meet all kinds of people in the movie business and they'd take me along to

parties and have me over to lunch at the studios. Well, I was there for a year, I

was turning twenty-six years old, and the closest I got was going on the

Universal Studios tour with all the nice people from Phoenix and Cleveland.

So finally it got to the point where I figured, if they won't invite me in, I'll invite

myself. Which is what I did.

I bought a copy of the Los Angeles Times and read the entertainment column

for a couple of days, and wrote down the names of some producers at different

studios. I decided I'd try hitting on one of the big studios first. So I called the

switchboard and asked for the office of this producer I had read about in the

paper. The secretary that answered sounded like the motherly type, so I figured I

had gotten lucky; if it was some young girl who was just there hoping she'd be

discovered, she probably wouldn't have given me the time of day.

But this Dorothy, she sounded like somebody that would take in a stray kitten,

somebody who'd feel sorry for the new kid that was feeling a little overwhelmed

on the new job. And I sure got just the right touch with her. It's not every day you

try to trick somebody and they give you even more than you asked for. Out of

pity, she not only gave me the name of one of the people in Security, but said I

should tell the lady that Dorothy wanted her to help me.

Of course I had planned to use Dorothy's name anyway. This made it even better.

Lauren opened right up and never even bothered to look up the name I gave to

see if it was really in the employee database.

When I drove up to the gate that afternoon, they not only had my name on the

visitor's list, they even had a parking space for me. I had a late lunch at the

commissary, and wandered the lot until the end of the day. I even sneaked into a

couple of sound stages and watched them shooting movies. Didn't leave till 7

o'clock. It was one of my most exciting days ever..Analyzing the Con

Everybody was a new employee once. We all have memories of what that first

day was like, especially when we were young and inexperienced. So when a new

employee asks for help, he can expect that many people-- especially entry-level

people--will remember their own new-kid on-the- block feelings and go out of

their way to lend a hand. The social engineer knows this, and he understands that

he can use it to play on the sympathies of his victims.

We make it too easy for outsiders to con their way into our company

plants and offices. Even with guards at entrances and sign-in procedures for

anyone who isn't an employee, any one of several variations on the ruse used in

this story will allow an intruder to obtain a visitor's badge and walk right in. And

if your company requires that visitors be escorted? That's a good rule, but it's

only effective if your employees are truly conscientious about stopping anyone

with or without a visitor's badge who is on his own, and questioning him. And

then, if the answers aren't satisfactory, your employees have to be willing to

contact security.

Making it too easy for outsiders to talk their way into your facilities endangers

your company's sensitive information. In today's climate, with the threat of

terrorist attacks hanging over our society, it's more than just information that

could be at risk.

"DO IT NOW"

Not everyone who uses social engineering tactics is a polished social engineer.

Anybody with an insider's knowledge of a particular company can turn

dangerous. The risk is even greater for any company that holds in its files and

databases any personal information about its employees, which, of course, most

companies do.

When workers are not educated or trained to recognize social engineering attacks,

determined people like the jilted lady in the following story can do things that

most honest people would think impossible.

Doug's Story

Things hadn't been going all that well with Linda anyway, and I knew as soon as

I met Erin that she was the one for me. Linda is, like, a little bit... well, sort of not

exactly unstable but she can sort of go off the deep end when she gets upset.

I told her as gentle as I could that she had to move out, and I helped her pack and

even let her take a couple of the Queensryche CDs that were really mine. As soon

as she was gone I went to the hardware store for a new Medico lock to put on the

front door and put it on that same night. The next morning I called the phone

company and had them change my phone number, and made it unpublished..That left me free to pursue Erin.

Linda's Story

I was ready to leave, anyway, I just hadn't decided when. But nobody likes to feel

rejected. So it was just a question of, what could I do to let him know what a jerk

he was?

It didn't take long to figure out. There had to be another girl, otherwise he

wouldn't of sent me packing in such a hurry. So I'd just wait a bit and then start

calling him late in the evening. You know, around the time they would least want

to be called.

I waited till the next weekend and called around 11 o'clock on Saturday night.

Only he had changed his phone number. And the new number was unlisted. That

just shows what kind of SOB the guy was.

It wasn't that big of a setback. I started rummaging through the papers I had

managed to take home just before I left my job at the phone company. And there

it was--I had saved a repair ticket from once when there was a problem with the

telephone line at Doug's, and the printout listed

the cable and pair for his phone. See, you can change your phone number all

you want, but you still have the same pair of copper wires running from your

house to the telephone company switching office, called the Central

Office, or CO. The set of copper wires from every house and apartment is

identified by these numbers, called the cable and pair. And if you know how

the phone company does things, which I do, knowing the target's cable and pair is

all you need to find out the phone number.

I had a list giving all the COs in the city, with their addresses and phone

numbers. I looked up the number for the CO in the neighborhood where I

used to live with Doug the jerk, and called, but naturally nobody was there.

Where's the switchman when you really need him? Took me all of about twenty

seconds to come up with a plan. I started calling around to the other COs and

finally located a guy. But he was miles away and he was probably sitting there

with his feet up. I knew he wouldn't want to do what I needed. I was ready with

my plan.

"This is Linda, Repair Center," I said. "We have an emergency. Service for a

paramedic unit has gone down. We have a field tech trying to restore

service but he can't find the problem. We need you to drive over to the

Webster CO immediately and see if we have dial tone leaving the central office."

And then I told him, 'I'll call you when you get there," because of course I

couldn't have him calling the Repair Center and asking for me..I knew he wouldn't want to leave the comfort of the central office to bundle up

and go scrape ice off his windshield and drive through the slush late at night. But

it was an emergency, so he couldn't exactly say he was too busy.

When I reached him forty-five minutes later at the Webster CO, I told him to

check cable 29 pair 2481, and he walked over to the flame and checked and said,

Yes, there was dial tone. Which of course I already knew.

So then I said, "Okay, I need you to do an LV," which means line verification,

which is asking him to identify the phone number. He does this by dialing a

special number that reads back the number he called from. He doesn't know

anything about if it's an unlisted number or that it's justbeen changed, so he did

what I asked and I heard the number being announced over his lineman's test set.

Beautiful. The whole thing had worked like a charm.

I told him, "Well, the problem must be out in the field," like I knew the ,,umber

all along. I thanked him and told him we'd keep working on it, and said good

night.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Once a social engineer knows how things work inside the targeted company, it

becomes easy to use that knowledge to develop rapport with legitimate

employees. Companies need to prepare for social engineering attacks from

current or former employees who may have an axe to grind. Background checks

may be helpful to weed out prospects who may have a propensity toward this

type of behavior. But in most cases, these people will be extremely difficult to

detect. The only reasonable safeguard in these cases is to enforce and audit

procedures for verifying identity, including the person's employment status, prior

to disclosing any information to anyone not personally known to still be with the

company.

So much for that Doug and trying to hide from me behind an unlisted number.

The fun was about to begin.

Analyzing the Con

The young lady in this story was able to get the information she wanted to carry

out her revenge because she had inside knowledge: the phone numbers,

procedures, and lingo of the telephone company. With it she was not only able to

find out a new, unlisted phone number, but was able to do it in the middle of a

wintry night, sending a telephone switchman chasing across town for her.."MR. BIGG WANTS THIS"

A popular and highly effective form of intimidation--popular in large measure

because it's so simple--relies on influencing human behavior by using authority.

Just the name of the assistant in the CEO's office can be valuable. Private

investigators and even head-hunters do this all the time. They'll call the

switchboard operator and say they want to be connected to the CEO's office.

When the secretary or executive assistant answers, they'll say they have a

document or package for the CEO, or if they send an email attachment, would

she print it out? Or else they'll ask, what's the fax number? And by the way,

what's your name?

Then they call the next person, and say, "Jeannie in Mr. Bigg's office told me to

call you so you can help me with something."

The technique is called name-dropping, and it's usually used as a method to

quickly establish rapport by influencing the target to believe that the attacker is

connected with somebody in authority. A target is more likely to do a favor for

someone who knows somebody he knows.

If the attacker has his eyes set on highly sensitive information, he may use this

kind of approach to stir up useful emotions in the victim, such as fear of getting

into trouble with his superiors. Here's an example.

Scott's Story

"Scott Abrams."

"Scott, this is Christopher Dalbridge. I just got off the phone with Mr. Biggley,

and he's more than a little unhappy. He says he sent a note ten days ago that you

people were to get copies of all your market penetration research over to us for

analysis. We never got a thing."

"Market penetration research? Nobody said anything to me about it.

What department are you in?"

"We're a consulting firm he hired, and we're already behind schedule." "Listen,

I'm just on my way to a meeting. Let me get your phone number

and . . ."

The attacker now sounded just short of truly frustrated: "Is that what

you want me to tell Mr. Biggley?! Listen, he expects our analysis by tomorrow

morning and we have to work on it tonight. Now, do you want me to tell him we.couldn't do it 'cause we couldn't get the report from you, or do you want to tell

him that yourself?."

An angry CEO can ruin your week. The target is likely to decide that maybe this

is something he better take care of before he goes into that meeting. Once again,

the social engineer has pressed the right button to get the response he wanted.

Analyzing the Con

The ruse of intimidation by referencing authority works especially well if the

other person is at a fairly low level in the company. The use of an important

person's name not only overcomes normal reluctance or suspicion, but often

makes the person eager to please; the natural instinct of wanting to be helpful is

multiplied when you think that the person you're helping is important or

influential.

The social engineer knows, though, that it's best when running this particular

deceit to use the name of someone at a higher level than the person's own boss.

And this gambit is tricky to use within a small organization: The attacker doesn't

want his victim making a chance comment to the VP of marketing. "I sent out the

product marketing plan you had that guy call me about," can too easily produce a

response of "What marketing plan? What guy?" And that could lead to the

discovery that the company has been victimized.

MITNICKS MESSAGE

Intimidation can create a fear of punishment, influencing people to cooperate.

Intimidation can also raise the fear of embarrassment or of being disqualified

from that new promotion.

People must be trained that it's not only acceptable but expected to challenge

authority when security is at stake. Information security training should include

teaching people how to challenge authority in customer-friendly ways, without

damaging relationships. Moreover, this expectation must be supported from the

top down. If an employee is not going to be backed up for challenging people

regardless of their status, the normal reaction is to stop challenging--just the

opposite of what you want.

WHAT THE SOCIAL SECURITY ADMINISTRATION KNOWS ABOUT

YOU

We like to think that government agencies with les on us keep the information

safely locked away from people without an authentic need to know. The reality is

that even the federal government isn't as immune to penetration as we would like

to imagine..May Linn's Phone Call

Place: A regional office of the Social Security Administration

Time: 1 0:1 8 A.M., Thursday morning

"Mod Three. This is May Linn Wang."

The voice on the other end of the phone sounded apologetic, almost timid.

"Ms. Wang, this is Arthur Arondale, in the Office of the Inspector General. Can I

call you 'May'?

"It's 'May Linn'," she said.

"Well, it's like this, May Linn. We've got a new guy in here who there's no

computer for yet, and right now he's got a priority project and he's using mine.

We're the government of the United States, for cryin' out loud, and they say they

don't have enough money in the budget to buy a computer for this guy to use.

And now my boss thinks I'm falling behind and doesn't want to hear any excuses,

you know?"

"I know what you mean, all right."

"Can you help me with a quick inquiry on MCS?" he asked, using the name of

the computer system for looking up taxpayer information.

"Sure, what'cha need?"

"The first thing I need you to do is an alphadent on Joseph Johnson, DOB

7/4/69." (Alphadent means to have the computer search for an account

alphabetically by taxpayer name, further identified by date of birth.)

After a brief pause, she asked:

"What do you need to know?"

"What's his account number?" he said, using the insider's

shorthand for the social security number. She read it off.

"Okay, I need you to do a numident on that account number,"

the caller said.

That was a request for her to read off the basic taxpayer data, and May Linn

responded by giving the taxpayer's place of birth, mother's maiden name, and

father's name. The caller listened patiently while she also gave him the month and

year the card was issued, and the district office it was issued by.

He next asked for a DEQY. (Pronounced "DECK-wee," it's short

for "detailed earnings query.").The DEQY request brought the response, "For what year?"

The caller replied, "Year 2001 ."

May Linn said, "The amount was $190,286, the payer was Johnson MicroTech."

"Any other wages?"

"No."

"Thanks," he said. "You've been very kind."

Then he tried to arrange to call her whenever he needed information and couldn't

get to his computer, again using the favorite trick of social engineers of always

trying to establish a connection so that he can keep going back to the same

person, avoiding the nuisance of having to find a new mark each time.

"Not next week," she told him, because she was going to Kentucky for her sister's

wedding.' Any other time, she'd do whatever she could.

When she put the phone down, May Linn felt good that she had been able to offer

a little help to a fellow unappreciated public servant.

Keith Carter's Story

To judge from the movies and from best-selling crime novels, a private

investigator is short on ethics and long on knowledge of how to get the juicy facts

on people. They do this by using thoroughly illegal methods, while just barely

managing to avoid getting arrested. The truth, of course, is that most PIs run

entirely legitimate businesses. Since many of them started their working lives as

sworn law enforcement officers, they know perfectly well what's legal and what

isn't, and most are not tempted to cross the line.

There are, however, exceptions. Some Pis - more than a few - do indeed fit the

mold of the guys in the crime stories. These guys are known in the trade as

information brokers, a polite term for people who are willing to break the rules.

They know they can get any assignment done a good deal faster and a good deal

easier if they take some shortcuts. That these shortcuts happen to be potential

felonies that might land them behind bars for a few years doesn't seem to deter

the more unscrupulous ones.

Meanwhile the upscale PIs--the ones who work out of a fancy office suite in a

high-rent part of town--don't do this kind of work themselves. They simply hire

some information broker to do it for them.

The guy we'll call Keith Carter was the kind of private eye unencumbered by

ethics..It was a typical case of "Where's he hiding the money?" Or sometimes it's

"Where's she hiding the money?" Sometimes it was a rich lady who wanted to

know where her husband had hidden her money (though why a woman with

money ever marries a guy without was a riddle Keith Carter wondered about now

and then but had never found a good answer for).

In this case the husband, whose name was Joe Johnson, was the one keeping the

money on ice. He "was a very smart guy who had started a high-tech company

with ten thousand dollars he borrowed from his wife's family and built into a

hundred-million dollar firm. According to her divorce lawyer, he had done an

impressive job of hiding his assets, and the lawyer wanted a complete rundown.

Keith figured his starting point would be the Social Security Administration,

targeting their files on Johnson, which would be packed with highly useful

information for a situation like this. Armed with their info, Keith could pretend to

be the target and get the banks, brokerage firms, and offshore institutions to tell

him everything.

His first phone call was to a local district office, using the same 800 number that

any member of the public uses, the number listed in the local phone book. When

a clerk came on the line, Keith asked to be connected to someone in Claims.

Another wait, and then a voice. Now Keith shifted gears; "Hi," he began. "This is

Gregory Adams, District Office 329. Listen, I'm trying to reach a claims adjuster

that handles an account number that ends in 6363, and the number I have goes to

a fax machine."

"That's Mod 2," the man said. He looked up the number and gave it to Keith.

Next he called Mod 2. When May Linn answered, he switched hats and went

through the routine about being from the Office of the Inspector General, and the

problem about somebody else having to use his computer. She gave him the

information he was looking for, and agreed to do whatever she could when he

needed help in the future.

Analyzing the Con

What made this approach effective was the play on the employee's sympathy with

the story about someone else using his computer and "my boss is not happy with

me." People don't show their emotions at work very often; when they do, it can

roll right over someone else's ordinary defenses against social engineering

attacks. The emotional ploy of "I'm in trouble, won't you help me?" was all it

took to win the day..Social Insecurity

Incredibly, the Social Security Administration has posted a copy of their entire

Program Operations Manual on the Web, crammed with information that's useful

for their people, but also incredibly valuable to social engineers. It contains

abbreviations, lingo, and instructions for how to request what you want, as

described in this story.

Want to learn more inside information about the Social Security Administration?

Just search on Google or enter the following address into your browser:

http://policy.ssa.gov/poms.nsf/. Unless the agency has already read this story and

removed the manual by the time you read this, you'll find on-line instructions that

even give detailed information on what data an SSA clerk is allowed to give to

the law enforcement community. In practical terms, that community includes any

social engineer who can convince an SSA clerk that he is from a law enforcement

organization. The attacker could not have been successful in obtaining this

information from one of the clerks who handles phone calls from the general

public. The kind of attack Keith used only works when the person on the

receiving end of the call is someone whose phone number is unavailable to the

public, and who therefore has the expectation that anyone calling must be

somebody on the inside--another example of speakeasy security'. The elements

that helped this attack to work included:

Knowing the phone number to the Mod.

Knowing the terminology they used--numident, alphadent, and DEQY.

Pretending to be from the Office of the Inspector General, which every federal

government employee knows as a government-wide investigative agency with

broad powers. This gives the attacker an aura of authority.

One interesting sidelight: Social engineers seem to know how to make requests

so that hardly anyone ever thinks, "Why are you calling me.'- even when,

logically; it would have made more sense if the call had gone to some other

person in some completely different department. Perhaps it simply offers such a

break in the monotony of the daily grind to help the caller that the victim

discounts how unusual the call seems.

Finally, the attacker in this incident, not satisfied with getting the information just

for the case at hand, wanted to establish a contact he could call on regularly. He

might otherwise have been able to use a common ploy for the sympathy attack--

"I spilled coffee on my keyboard." That was no good here, though, because a

keyboard can be replaced in a day.

Hence he used the story about somebody else using his computer, which he could

reasonably string out for weeks: "Yep, I thought he'd have his own computer.yesterday, but one came in and another guy pulled some kind of deal and got it

instead. So this joker is still showing up in my cubicle." And so on.

Poor me, I need help. Works like a charm.

ONE SIMPLE CALL

One of an attacker's main hurdles is to make his request sound reasonable

something typical of requests that come up in the victim's workday, something

that doesn't put the victim out too much. As with a lot of other things in life,

making a request sound logical may be a challenge one day, but the next, it may

be a piece of cake.

Mary H's Phone Call

Date/Time: Monday, November 23, 7:49 A.M.

Place: Mauersby & Storch Accounting, New York

To most people, accounting work is number crunching and bean counting,

generally viewed as being about as enjoyable as having a root canal. Fortunately,

not everyone sees the work that way. Mary Harris, for example, found her work

as a senior accountant absorbing, part of the reason she was one of the most

dedicated accounting employees at her

firm.

On this particular Monday, Mary arrived early to get a head start on what she

expected to be a long day, and was surprised to find her phone ringing. She

picked it up and gave her name.

"Hi, this is Peter Sheppard. I'm with Arbuclde Support, the company that does

tech support for your firm. We logged a couple of complaints over the weekend

from people having problems with the computers there. I thought I could

troubleshoot before everybody comes into work this morning. Are you having

any problems with your computer or connecting to the network?"

She told him she didn't know yet. She turned her computer on and while it was

booting, he explained what he wanted to do.

"I'd like to run a couple of tests with you, he said. "I'm able to see on my screen

the keystrokes you type, and I want to make sure they're going across the network

correctly. So every time you type a stroke, I want you to tell me what it is, and I'll

see if the same letter or number is appearing here. Okay?".With nightmare visions of her computer not working and a frustrating day of not

being able to get any work done, she was more than happy to have this man help

her. After a few moments, she told him, "I have the login screen, and I'm going to

type in my ID. I'm typing it now--M...A...R...Y...D."

"Great so far," he said. "I'm seeing that here. Now, go ahead and type your

password but don't tell me what it is. You should never tell anybody your

password, not even tech support. I'll just see asterisks here--your password is

protected so I can't see it.': None of this was true, but it made sense to Mary. And

then he said, "Let me know once your computer has started up."

When she said it was running, he had her open two of her applications, and she

reported that they launched "just fine."

Mary was relieved to see that everything seemed to be working normally. Peter

said, "I'm glad I could make sure you'll be able to use your computer okay. And

listen," he went on, "we just installed an update that allow people to change their

passwords. Would you be willing to take a couple of minutes with me so I can

see if we got it working right?

She was grateful for the help he had given her and readily agreed. Peter talked

her through the steps of launching the application that allows a user to change

passwords, a standard element of the Windows 2000 operating system. "Go

ahead and enter your password," he told her. "But remember not to say it out

loud."

When she had done that, Peter said, "Just for this quick test, when it asks for your

new password, enter 'test123.' Then type it again in the Verification box, and

click Enter."

He walked her through the process of disconnecting from the server. He had her

wait a couple of minutes, then connect again, this time trying to log on with her

new password. It worked like a charm, Peter seemed very pleased, and talked her

through changing back to her original password or choosing a new one--once

more cautioning her about not saying the password out loud.

"Well, Mary," Peter told her. "We didn't find any trouble, and that's great. Listen,

if any problems do come up, just call us over here at Arbuckle. I'm usually on

special projects but anybody here who answers can help you." She thanked him

and they said goodbye.

Peter's Story

The word had gotten around about Peter--a number of the people in his

community who had gone to school with him had heard he turned into some kind.of a computer whiz who could often find out useful information that other people

couldn't get. When Alice Conrad came to him to ask a favor, he said no at first.

Why should he help? When he ran into her once and tried to ask for a date, she

had turned him down cold.

But his refusal to help didn't seem to surprise her. She said she didn't think it was

something he could do anyway. That was like a challenge, because of course he

was sure he could. And that was how he came to

agree.

Alice had been offered a contract for some consulting work for a marketing

company, but the contract terms didn't seem very good. Before she went back to

ask for a better deal, she wanted to know what terms other consultants had on

their contracts.

This is how Peter tells the story.

I wouldn't tell Alice but I got off on people wanting me to do something they

didn't think I could, when I knew it would be easy. Well, not easy, exactly, not

this time. It would take a bit of doing. But that was okay.

I could show her what smart was really all about.

A little after 7:30 Monday morning, I called the marketing company's offices and

got the receptionist, said that I was with the company that handled their pension

plans and I need to talk to somebody in Accounting. Had she noticed if any of the

Accounting people had come in yet? She said, "I think I saw Mary come in a few

minutes ago, I'll try her for you."

When Mary picked up the phone, I told her my little story about computer

problems, which was designed to give her the jitters so she'd be glad to cooperate.

As soon as I had talked her through changing her password, I then quickly logged

onto the system with the same temporary password I had asked her to use,

test123.

Here's where the mastery comes in--I installed a small program that

allowed me to access the company's computer system whenever I wanted, using a

secret password of my own. After I hung up with Mary, my first step was to erase

the audit trail so no one would even know I had been on his or her system. It was

easy. After elevating my system privileges, I was able to download a free

program called clearlogs that I found on a security- related Web site at

www.ntsecurity.nu..Time for the real job. I ran a search for any documents with the word contract" in

the filename, and downloaded the files. Then I searched some more and came on

the mother lode--the directory containing all the consultant payment reports. So I

put together all the contract files and a list of payments.

Alice could pore through the contracts and see how much they were paying other

consultants. Let her do the donkeywork of poring through all those files. I had

done what she asked me to.

From the disks I put the data onto, I printed out some of the files so I

could show her the evidence. I made her meet me and buy dinner. You should

have seen her face when she thumbed through the stack of papers. "No way," she

said. "No way."

I didn't bring the disks with me. They were the bait. I said she'd have to come

over to get them, hoping maybe she'd want to show her gratitude for the favor I

just did her.

MITNICK MESSAGE

It's amazing how easy it is for a social engineer to get people to do things based

on how he structures the request. The premise is to trigger an automatic response

based on psychological principles, and rely on the mental shortcuts people take

when they perceive the caller as an ally.

Analyzing the Con

Peter's phone call to the marketing company represented the most basic form of

social engineering--a simple attempt that needed little preparation, worked on the

first attempt, and took only a few minutes to bring off.

Even better, Mary, the victim, had no reason to think that any sort of trick or ruse

had been played on her, no reason to file a report or raise a ruckus.

The scheme worked through Peter's use of three social engineering tactics. First

he got Mary's initial cooperation by generating fear--making her think that her

computer might not be usable. Then he took the time to have her open two of her

applications so she could be sure they were working okay, strengthening the

rapport between the two of them, a sense of being allies. Finally, he got her

further cooperation for the essential part of his task by playing on her gratitude

for the help he had provided in making sure her computer was okay.

By telling her she shouldn't ever reveal her password, should not reveal it even to

him, Peter did a thorough but subtle job of convincing her that he was concerned.about the security of her company's files. This boosted her confidence that he

must be legitimate because he was protecting her and the company.

THE POLICE RAID

Picture this scene: The government has been trying to lay a trap for a man named

Arturo Sanchez, who has been distributing movies free over the Internet. The

Hollywood studios say he's violating their copyrights, he says he's just trying to

nudge them to recognize an inevitable market so they'll start doing something

about making new movies available for download. He points out (correctly) that

this could be a huge source of revenue for the studios that they seem to be

completely ignoring.

Search Warrant, Please

Coming home late one night, he checks the windows of his apartment from

across the street and notices the lights are off, even though he always leaves one

on when he goes out.

He pounds and bangs on a neighbor's door until he wakes the man up, and learns

that there was indeed a police raid in the building. But they made the neighbors

stay downstairs, and he still isn't sure what apartment they went into. He only

knows they left carrying some heavy things, only they were wrapped up and he

couldn't tell what they were. And they didn't take anybody away in handcuffs.

Arturo checks his apartment. The bad news is that there's a paper from the police

requiring that he call immediately and set up an appointment for an interview

within three days. The worse news is that his computers are missing.

Arturo vanishes into the night, going to stay with a friend. But the uncertainty

gnaws at him. How much do the police know? Have they caught up with him at

last, but left him a chance to flee? Or is this about something else entirely,

something he can clear up without having to leave town?

Before you read on, stop and think for a moment: Can you imagine any way you

could find out what the police know about you? Assuming you don't have any

political contacts or friends in the police department or the prosecutor s office, do

you imagine there's any way that you, as an ordinary citizen, could get this

information? Or that even someone with social engineering skills could?

Scamming the Police

Arturo satisfied his need to know like this: To start with, he got the phone

number for a nearby copy store, called them, and asked for their fax number..Then he called the district attorney's office, and asked for Records. When he was

connected with the records office, he introduced himself as an investigator with

Lake County, and said he needed to speak with the clerk who files the active

search warrants.

"I do," the lady said. "Oh, great," he answered. "Because we raided a

suspect last night and I'm trying to locate the affidavit."

"We file them by address," she told him.

He gave his address, and she sounded almost excited. "Oh, yeah," she bubbled, "I

know about that one. 'The Copyright Caper.'"

"That's the one," he said. "I'm looking for the affidavit and copy of the warrant.

"Oh, I have it right here."

"Great," he said. "Listen, I'm out in the field and I have a meeting with the Secret

Service on this case if I fifteen minutes. I've been so absentminded lately, I left

the file at home, and I'll never make it there and back in time. Could I get copies

from you?"

"Sure, no problem. I'll make copies; you can come right over and pick them up."

"Great," he said. "That's great. But listen, I'm on the other side of town. Is it

possible you could fax them to me?"

That created a small problem, but not insurmountable. "We don't have a fax up

here in Records," she said. "But they have one downstairs in the Clerk's office

they might let me use."

He said, "Let me call the Clerk's office and set it up."

The lady in the Clerk's office said she'd be glad to take care of it but wanted to

know "Who's going to pay for it?" She needed an accounting code.

"I'll get the code and call you back," he told her.

He then called the DA's office, again identified himself as a police officer and

simply asked the receptionist, "What's the accounting code for the DA's office?"

Without hesitation, she told him.

Calling back to the Clerk's office to provide the accounting number gave him the

excuse for manipulating the lady a little further: He talked her into walking

upstairs to get the copies of the papers to be faxed..NOTE

How does a social engineer know the details of so many operation - police

departments, prosecutors offices, phone company practices, the organization of

specific companies that are in fields useful in his attacks, such as

telecommunications and computers ? Because it's his business to find out. This

knowledge is a social engineers stock in the trade because information can aid

him in his efforts to deceive.

Covering His Tracks

Arturo still had another couple of steps to take. There was always a possibility

that someone would smell something fishy, and he might arrive at the copy store

to find a couple of detectives, casually dressed and trying to look busy until

somebody showed up asking for that particular fax. He waited a while, and then

called the Clerk's office back to verify that the lady had sent the fax. Fine so far.

He called another copy store in the same chain across town and used the ruse

about how he was "pleased with your handling of a job and want to write the

manager a letter of congratulations, what's her name?" With that essential piece

of information, he called the first copy store again and said he wanted to talk to

the manager. When the man picked up the phone, Arturo said, "Hi, this is Edward

at store 628 in Hartfield. My manager, Anna, told me to call you. We've got a

customer who's all upset--somebody gave him the fax number of the wrong store.

He's here waiting for an important fax, only the number he was given is for your

store." The manager promised to have one of his people locate the fax and send it

on to the Hartfield store immediately.

Arturo was already waiting at the second store when the fax arrived there. Once

he had it in hand, he called back to the Clerk's office to tell the lady thanks, and

'It's not necessary to bring those copies back upstairs, you can just throw them

away now." Then he called the manager at the first store and told him, too, to

throw away their copy of the fax. This way there wouldn't be any record of what

had taken place, just in case somebody later came around asking questions.

Social engineers know you can never be too careful.

Arranged this way, Arturo didn't even have to pay charges at the first copy store

for receiving the fax and for sending it out again to the second store. And if it

turned out that the police did show up at the first store, Arturo would already

have his fax and be long gone by the time they could arrange to get people to the

second location.

The end of the story: The affidavit and warrant showed that the police had well-documented

evidence of Arturo's movie-copying activities. That was what he.needed to know. By midnight, he had crossed the state line. Arturo was on the

way to a new life, somewhere else with a new identity, ready to get started again

on his campaign.

Analyzing the Con

The people who work in any district attorney's office, anywhere, are in constant

contact with law enforcement officers--answering questions, making

arrangements, taking messages. Anybody gutsy enough to call and claim to be a

police officer, sheriff's deputy, or whatever will likely be taken at his word.

Unless it's obvious that he doesn't know the terminology, or if he's nervous and

stumbles over his words, or in some other way doesn't sound authentic, he may

not even be asked a single question to verify his claim. That's exactly what

happened here, with two different

workers.

MITNICK MESSAGE

The truth of the matter is that no one is immune to being duped by a good social

engineer. Because of the pace of normal life, we don't always take the time for

thoughtful decisions, even on matters that are important to us. Complicated

situations, lack of time, emotional state, or mental fatigue can easily distract us.

So we take a mental shortcut, making our decisions without analyzing the

information carefully and completely, a mental process known as automatic

responding. This is even true for federal, state, and local law enforcement

officials. We're all human.

Obtaining a needed charge code was handled with a single phone call. Then

Arturo played the sympathy card with the story about "a meeting with the Secret

Service in fifteen minutes, I've been absent-minded and left the file at home." She

naturally felt sorry for him, and went out of her way to help.

Then by using not one but two copy stores, Arturo made himself extra safe when

he went to pick up the fax. A variation on this that makes the fax even more

difficult to trace: Instead of having the document sent to another copy store, the

attacker can give what appears to be a fax number, but is really an address at a

free Internet service that will receive a fax for you and automatically forward it to

your email address. That way it can be downloaded directly to the attacker's

computer, and he never has to show his face anyplace where someone might later

be able to identify him. And the email address and electronic fax number can be

abandoned as soon as the mission has been accomplished.

TURNING THE TABLES

A young man I'll call Michael Parker was one of those people who figured out a

bit late that the better-paying jobs mostly go to people with college degrees. He.had a chance to attend a local college on a partial scholarship plus education

loans, but it meant working nights and weekends to pay his rent, food, gas, and

car insurance. Michael, who always liked to find shortcuts, thought maybe there

was another way, one that paid off faster and with less effort. Because he had

been learning about computers from the time he got to play with one at age ten

and became fascinated with finding out how they worked, he decided to see if he

could "create" his own accelerated bachelor's degree in computer science.

Graduating--Without Honors

He could have broken into the computer systems of the state university, found the

record of someone who had graduated with a nice B+ or A-average, copied the

record, put his own name on it, and added it to the records of that year's

graduating class. Thinking this through, feeling somehow uneasy about the idea,

he realized there must be other records of a student having been on campus--tuition

payment records, the housing office, and who knows what else. Creating

just the record of courses and grades would leave too many loopholes.

Plotting further, feeling his way, it came to him that he could reach his

goal by seeing if the school had a graduate with the same name as his, who had

earned a computer science degree any time during an appropriate span of years. If

so, he could just put down the other Michael Parker's social security number on

employment application forms; any company that checked the name and social

security number with the university would be told that, yes, he did have the

claimed degree. (It wouldn't be obvious to most people but was obvious to him

that he could put one social security number on the job application and then, if

hired, put his own real number on the new-employee forms. Most companies

would never think to check whether a new hire had used a different number

earlier in the hiring process.)

Logging In to Trouble

How to find a Michael Parker in the university's records? He went about it like

this:

Going to the main library on the university campus, he sat down at a computer

terminal, got up on the Internet, and accessed the university's Web site. He then

called the Registrar's office. With the person who answered, he went through one

of the by-now-familiar social engineering routines: "I'm calling from the

Computer Center, we're making some changes to the network configuration and

we want to make sure we don't

disrupt your access. Which server do you connect to?"

"What do you mean, server, he was asked.."What computer do you connect to when you need to look up student academic

information.

The answer, admin.rnu.edu, gave him the name of the computer where student

records were stored. This was the first piece of the puzzle: He now knew his

target machine.

LINGO

DUMB TERMINAL A terminal that doesn't contain its own microprocessor.

Dumb terminals can only accept simple commands and display text characters

and numbers.

He typed that URL into the computer and got no response--as expected, there was

a firewall blocking access. So he ran a program to see if he could connect to any

of the services running on that computer, and found an open port with a Telnet

service running, which allows one computer to connect remotely to another

computer and access it as if directly connected using a dumb terminal. All he

would need to gain access would be the standard user ID and password.

He made another call to the registrar's office, this time listening carefully to make

sure he was talking to a different person. He got a lady, and again he claimed to

be from the university's Computer Center. They were installing a new production

system for administrative records, he told her. As a favor, he'd like her to connect

to the new system, still in test mode, to see if she could access student academic

records okay. He gave her the IP address to connect to, and talked her through the

process.

In fact, the IP address took her to the computer Michael was sitting at in the

campus library. Using the same process described in Chapter 8, he had created a

login simulator--a decoy sign-in screen--looking just like the one she was

accustomed to seeing when going onto the system for student records. "It's not

working," she told him. "It keeps saying 'Login incorrect.

By now the login simulator had fed the keystrokes of her account name and

password to Michael's terminal; mission accomplished. He told her, "Oh, some of

the accounts haven't been brought over yet to this machine. Let me set up your

account, and I'll call you back." Careful about tying up loose ends, as any

proficient social engineer needs to be, he would make a point of phoning later to

say that the test system wasn't working right yet, and if it was okay with her,

they'd call back to her or one of the other folks there when they had figured out

what was causing the problem..The Helpful Registrar

Now Michael knew what computer system he needed to access, and he had a

user's ID and password. But what commands would he need in order to search the

files for information on a computer science graduate with the right name and

graduation date? The student database would be a proprietary one, created on

campus to meet the specific requirements of the university and the Registrar's

office, and would have a unique way of accessing information in the database.

First step in clearing this last hurdle: Find out who could guide him through the

mysteries of searching the student database. He called the Registrar's office

again, this time reaching a different person. He was from the office of the Dean

of Engineering, he told the lady, and he asked, "Who are we supposed to call for

help when we're having problems accessing the student academic rues.

Minutes later he was on the phone with the college's database administrator,

pulling the sympathy act: "I'm Mark Sellers, in the registrar's office. You feel like

taking pity on a new guy? Sorry to be calling you but they're all in a meeting this

afternoon and there's no one around to help me. I need to retrieve a list of all

graduates with a computer science degree, between 1990 and 2000. They need it

by the end of the day and if I don't have it, I may not have this job for long. You

willing to help out a guy in trouble?" Helping people out was part of what this

database administrator did, so he was extra patient as he talked Michael step by

step through the process.

By the time they hung up, Michael had downloaded the entire list of computer

science graduates for those years. Within a few minutes he had run a search,

located two Michael Parkers, chosen one of them, and obtained the guy's social

security number as well as other pertinent information stored in the database.

He had just become "Michael Parker, B.S. in Computer Science, graduated with

honors, 1998." In this case, the "B.S." was uniquely appropriate.

Analyzing the Con

This attack used one ruse I haven't talked about before: The attacker asking the

organization's database administrator to walk him through the steps of carrying

out a computer process he didn't know how to do. A powerful and effective

turning of the tables, this is the equivalent of asking the owner of a store to help

you carry a box containing items you've just stolen from his shelves out to your

car..MITNICK MESSAGE

Computer users are sometimes clueless about the threats and vulnerabilities

associated with social engineering that exist in our world of technology. They

have access to information, yet lack the detailed knowledge of what might prove

to be a security threat. A social engineer will target an employee who has little

understanding of how valuable the information being sought is, so the target is

more likely to grant the stranger's request.

PREVENTING THE CON

Sympathy, guilt, and intimidation are three very popular psychological triggers

used by the social engineer, and these stories have demonstrated the tactics in

action. But what can you and your company do to avoid these types of attacks?

Protecting Data

Some stories in this chapter emphasize the danger of sending a file to someone

you don't know, even when that person is (or appears to be) an employee, and the

file is being sent internally, to an email address or tax machine within the

company.

Company security policy needs to be very specific about the safeguards for

surrendering valued data to anyone not personally known to the sender. Exacting

procedures need to be established for transferring files with sensitive information.

When the request is from someone not personally known, there must be clear

steps to take for verification, with different levels of authentication depending on

the sensitivity of the information.

Here are some techniques to consider:

Establish the need to know (which may require obtaining authorization from the

designated information owner).

Keep a personal or departmental log of these transactions.

Maintain a list of people who have been specially trained in the procedures and

who are trusted to authorize sending out sensitive information. Require that only

these people be allowed to send information to anyone outside the workgroup.

If a request for the data is made in writing (email, fax, or mail) take additional

security steps to verify that the request actually came from the person it appears

to have come from..About Passwords

All employees who are able to access any sensitive information--and today that

means virtually every worker who uses a computer--need to understand that

simple acts like changing your password, even for a few moments, can lead to a

major security breach.

Security training needs to cover the topic of passwords, and that has to focus in

part on when and how to change your password, what constitutes an acceptable

password, and the hazards of letting anyone else become involved in the process.

The training especially needs to convey to all employees that they should be

suspicious of any request that involves their passwords.

On the surface this appears to be a simple message to get across to employees. It's

not, because to appreciate this idea requires that employees grasp how a simple

act like changing a password can lead to a security compromise. You can tell a

child "Look both ways before crossing the street," but until the child understands

why that's important, you're relying on blind obedience. And rules requiring blind

obedience are typically ignored or forgotten.

NOTE

Passwords are such a central focus of social engineering attacks that we devote a

separate section to the topic in Chapter 16, where you will find specific

recommended policies on managing passwords.

A Central Reporting Point

Your security policy should provide a person or group designated as a central

point for reporting suspicious activities that appear to be attempts to infiltrate

your organization. All employees need to know who to call any time they suspect

an attempt at electronic or physical intrusion. The phone number of the place to

make these reports should always be close at hand so employees don't have to dig

for it if they become suspicious that an attack is taking place.

Protect Your Network

Employees need to understand that the name of a computer server or network is

not trivial information, but rather it can give an attacker essential knowledge that

helps him gain trust or find the location of the information he desires.

In particular, people such as database administrators who work with software

belong to that category of those with technology expertise, and they need to

operate under special and very restrictive rules about verifying the identity of

people who call them for information or advice..People who regularly provide any. kind of computer help need to be well trained

in what kinds of requests should be red flags, suggesting that the caller may be

attempting a social engineering attack.

It's worth noting, though, that from the perspective of the database administrator

in the last story in this chapter, the caller met the criteria for being legitimate: He

was calling from on campus, and he was obviously on a site that required an

account name and password. This just makes clear once again the importance of

having standardized procedures for verifying the identity of anybody requesting

information, especially in a case like this where the caller was asking for help in

obtaining access to confidential records.

All of this advice goes double for colleges and universities. It's not news that

computer hacking is a favorite pastime for many college students, and it should

also be no surprise that student records--and sometimes faculty records, as well--

are a tempting target. This abuse is so rampant that some corporations actually

consider campuses a hostile environment, and create firewall rules that block

access from educational institutions with addresses that end in .edu.

The long and short of it is that all student and personnel records of any kind

should be seen as prime targets of attack, and should be well protected as

sensitive information.

Training Tips

Most social engineering attacks are ridiculously easy to defend against... for

anyone who knows what to be on the lookout for.

From the corporate perspective, there is a fundamental need for good training.

But there is also a need for something else: a variety of ways to remind people of

what they've learned.

Use splash screens that appear when the user's computer is turned on, with a

different security message each day. The message should be designed so that it

does not disappear automatically, but requires the user to click on some kind of

acknowledgement that he/she has read it.

Another approach I recommend is to start a series of security reminders. Frequent

reminder messages are important; an awareness program needs to be ongoing and

never-ending. In delivering content, the reminders should not be worded the same

in every instance. Studies have shown that these messages are more effectively

received when they vary in wording or when used in different examples..One excellent approach is to use short blurbs in the company newsletter. This

should not be a full column on the subject, although a security column would

certainly be valuable. Instead, design a two- or three-column-wide insert,

something like a small display ad in your local newspaper. In each issue of the

newsletter, present a new security reminder in this short, attention-catching way..Chapter 9

The Reverse Sting

The sting, mentioned elsewhere in this book (and in my opinion probably the best

movie that s ever been made about a con operation), lays out its tricky plot in

fascinating detail. The sting operation in the movie is an exact depiction of how

top grifters run "the wire," one of the three types of major swindles referred to as

"big cons." If you want to know how a team of professionals pulls off a scam

raking in a great deal of money in a single evening, there's no better textbook.

But traditional cons, whatever their particular gimmick, run according to a

pattern. Sometimes a ruse is worked in the opposite direction, which is called a

reverse sting. This is an intriguing twist in which the attacker sets up the situation

so that the victim calls on the attacker for help, or a co worker has made a

request, which the attacker is responding to.

How does this work? You're about to find out.

LINGO

REVERSE STING A con in which the person being attacked asks the attacker

for help

THE ART OF FRIENDLY PERSUASION

When the average person conjures up the picture of a computer hacker, what

usually comes to mind is the uncomplimentary image of a lonely, introverted

nerd whose best friend is his computer and who has difficulty carrying on a

conversation, except by instant messaging. The social engineer, who often has

hacker skills, also has people skills at the opposite end of the spectrum--well-developed

abilities to use and manipulate people that allow him to talk his way

into getting information in ways you would never have believed possible.

Angela's Caller

Place: Valley branch, Industrial Federal Bank.

Time: 11:27 A.M.

Angela Wisnowski answered a phone call from a man who said he was just about

to receive a sizeable inheritance and he wanted information on the different types

of savings accounts, certificates of deposit, and whatever other investments she

might be able to suggest that would be safe, but earn decent interest. She

explained there were quite a number of choices and asked if he'd like to come in

and sit down with her to discuss them. He was leaving on a trip as soon as the

money arrived, he said, and had a lot of arrangements to make. So she began

suggesting some of the possibilities and giving him details of the interest rates,.what happens if you sell a CD early, and so on, while trying to pin down his

investment goals.

She seemed to be making progress when he said, "Oh, sorry, I've got to take this

other call. What time can I finish this conversation with you so I can make some

decisions? When do you leave for lunch?" She told him 12:30 and he said he'd try

to call back before then or the following day.

Louis's Caller

Major banks use internal security codes that change every day. When somebody

from one branch needs information from another branch, he proves he's entitled

to the information by demonstrating he knows the day's code. For an added

degree of security and flexibility, some major banks issue multiple codes each

day. At a West Coast outfit I'll call Industrial Federal Bank, each employee finds

a list of five codes for the day, identified as A through E, on his or her computer

each morning.

Place: Same.

Time: 12:48 '.M., same day.

Louis Halpburn didn't think anything of it when a call came in that afternoon, a

call like others he handled regularly several times a week.

'Hello," the caller said. "This is Neil Webster. I'm calling from branch 3182 in

Boston. Angela Wisnowski, please."

"She's at lunch. Can I help?"

"Well, she left a message asking us to fax some information on one of our

customers."

The caller sounded like he had been having a bad day.

"The person who normally handles those requests is out sick," he said. "I've got a

stack of these to do, it's almost 4 o'clock here and I'm supposed to be out of this

place to go to a doctor's appointment in half an hour."

The manipulation--giving all the reasons why the other person should feel sorry

for him--was part of softening up the mark. He went on, "Whoever took her

phone message, the fax number is unreadable. It's 213-something. What's the

rest?"

Louis gave the fax number, and the caller said, "Okay, thanks.

Before I can fax this, I need to ask you for Code B."."But you called me," he said with just enough chill so the man from Boston

would get the message.

This is good, the caller thought. It's so cool when people don't fall over at the first

gentle shove. If the, don't resist a little, the job is too easy and I could start getting

lazy.

To Louis, he said, "I've got a branch manager that's just turned paranoid about

getting verification before we send anything out, is all. But listen, if you don't

need us to fax the information, it's okay. No need to verify."

"Look," Louis said, "Angela will be back in half an hour or so. I can have her call

you back."

"I'll just tell her I couldn't send the information today because you wouldn't

identify this as a legitimate request by giving me the code. If I'm not out sick

tomorrow, I'll call her back then."

"The message says 'Urgent.' Never mind, without verification my hands are tied.

You'll tell her I tried to send it but you wouldn't give the code, okay?"

Louis gave up under the pressure. An audible sigh of annoyance came winging

its way down the phone line.

"Well," he said, "wait a minute; I have to go to my computer. Which code did

you want?"

"B," the caller said.

He put the call on hold and then in a bit picked up the line again. "It's 3184."

"That's not the right code."

"Yes it is--B is 3184."

"I didn't say B, I said E."

"Oh, damn. Wait a minute."

Another pause while he again looked up the codes.

"E is 9697."

"9697--right. I'll have the fax on the way. Okay?"

"Sure. Thanks."

Walter's Call

"Industrial Federal Bank, this is Walter."

"Hey, Walter, it's Bob Grabowski in Studio City, branch 38," the caller said. "I

need you to pull a sig card on a customer account and fax it to me." The sig card,

or signature card, has more than just the customer's signature on it; it also has

identifying information, familiar items such as the social security number, date of.birth, mother's maiden name, and sometimes even a driver's license number. Very

handy to a social engineer.

"Sure thing. What's Code C?"

"Another teller is using my computer right now," the caller said. "But I just used

B and E, and I remember those. Ask me one of those."

"Okay, what's E?"

"E is 9697."

A few minutes later, Walter faxed the sig card as requested.

Donna Plaice's Call

"Hi, this is Mr. Anselmo."

"How can I help you today?"

"What's that 800 number I'm supposed to call when I want to see if a deposit has

been credited yet?"

"You're a customer of the bank?"

"Yes, and I haven't used the number in a while and now I don't know where I

wrote it down."

"The number is 800-555-8600."

"Okay, thanks."

Vince Capelli's Tale

The son of a Spokane street cop, Vince knew from an early age that he wasn't

going to spend his life slaving long hours and risking his neck for minimum

wage. His two main goals in life became getting out of Spokane, and going into

business for himself. The laughter of his homies all through high school only

fired him up all the more--they thought it was hilarious that he was so busted on

starting his own business but had no idea what business it might be.

Secretly Vince knew they were right. The only thing he was good at was playing

catcher on the high school baseball team. But not good enough to capture a

college scholarship, no way good enough for professional baseball. So what

business was he going to be able to start?

One thing the guys in Vince's group never quite figured out: Anything

one of them had---a new switchblade knife, a nifty pair of warm gloves, a sexy

new girlfriend if Vince admired it, before long the item was his. He didn't steal it,

or sneak behind anybody's back; he didn't have to. The guy who had it would.give it up willingly, and then wonder afterward how it had happened. Even

asking Vince wouldn't have gotten you anywhere: He didn't know himself.

People just seemed to let him have whatever he wanted.

Vince Capelli was a social engineer from an early age, even though he had never

heard the term.

His friends stopped laughing once they all had high school diplomas in hand.

While the others slogged around town looking for jobs where you didn't have to

say "Do you want fries with that?" Vince's dad sent him off to talk to an old cop

pal who had left the force to start his own private investigation business in San

Francisco. He quickly spotted Vince's talent for the work, and took him on.

That was six years ago. He hated the part about getting the goods on unfaithful

spouses, which involved achingly dull hours of sitting and watching, but felt

continually challenged by assignments to dig up asset information for attorneys

trying to figure out if some miserable stiff was rich enough to be worth suing.

These assignments gave him plenty of chances to use his wits.

Like the time he had to look into the bank accounts of a guy named Joe

Markowitz. Joe had maybe worked a shady deal on a one-time friend of his,

which friend now wanted to know, if he sued, was Markowitz flush enough that

the friend might get some of his money back?

Vince's first step would be to find out at least one, but preferably two, of the

bank's security codes for the day. That sounds like a nearly impossible challenge:

What on earth would induce a bank employee to knock a chink in his own

security system? Ask yourself--if you wanted to do this, would you have any idea

of how to go about it?

For people like Vince, it's too easy.

People trust you if you know the inside lingo of their job and their company. It's

like showing you belong to their inner circle. It's like a secret handshake.

I didn't need much of that for a job like this. Definitely not brain surgery. All's I

needed to get started was a branch number. When I dialed the Beacon Street

office in Buffalo, the guy that answered sounded like a teller.

"This is Tim Ackerman," I said. Any name would do, he wasn't going to write it

down. "What's the branch number there?"

"The phone number or the branch number, he wanted to know, which was pretty

stupid because I had just dialed the phone number, hadn't I? "Branch number."."3182," he said. Just like that. No, "Whad'ya wanna know for?" or anything.

'Cause it's not sensitive information, it's written on just about every piece of paper

they use.

Step Two, call the branch where my target did his banking, get the name of one

of their people, and find out when the person would be out for lunch. Angela.

Leaves at 12:30. So far, so good.

Step Three, call back to the same branch during Angela's lunch break, say I'm

calling from branch number such-and-such in Boston, Angela needs this

information faxed, gimme a code for the day. This is the tricky part; it's where the

rubber meets the road. If I was making up a test to be a social engineer, I'd put

something like this on it, where your victim gets suspicious--for good reason--

and you still stick in there until you break him down and get the information you

need. You can't do that by reciting lines from a script or learning a routine, you

got to be able to read your victim, catch his mood, play him like landing a fish

where you let out a little line and reel in, let out and reel in. Until you get him in

the net and flop him into the boat, splat!

So I landed him and had one of the codes for the day. A big step. With most

banks, one is all they use, so I would've been home flee. Industrial Federal Bank

uses five, so having just one out of five is long odds. With two out of five, I'd

have a much better chance of getting through the next act of this little drama. I

love that part about "I didn't say B, I said E." When it works, it's beautiful. And it

works most of the time.

Getting a third one would have been even better. I've actually managed to get

three on a single call--"B," "D," and "E" sound so much alike that you can claim

they misunderstood you again. But you have to be talking to somebody who's a

real pushover. This man wasn't. I'd go with two.

The day codes would be my trump to get the signature card. I call, and the guy

asks for a code. C he wants, and I've only got B and E. But it's not the end of the

world. You gotta stay cool at a moment like this, sound confident, keep right on

going, Real smooth, I played him with the one about, "Somebody's using my

computer, ask me one of these others."

We're all employees of the same company, we're all in this together, make it easy

on the guy--that's what you're hoping the victim is thinking at a moment like this.

And he played it right by the script. He took one of the choices I offered, I gave

him the right answer, he sent the fax of the sig card..Almost home. One more call gave me the 800 number that customers use for the

automated service where an electronic voice reads you off the information you

ask for. From the sig card, I had all of my target's account numbers and his PIN

number, because that bank used the first five or last four digits of the social

security number. Pen in hand, I called the 800 number and after a few minutes of

pushing buttons, I had the latest balance in all four of the guy's accounts, and just

for good measure, his most recent deposits and withdrawals in each.

Everything my client had asked for and more. I always like to give a little extra

for good measure. Keep the clients happy. After all, repeat business is what keeps

an operation going, right?

Analyzing the Con

The key to this entire episode was obtaining the all-important day codes, and to

do that the attacker, Vince, used several different techniques.

He began with a little verbal arm-twisting when Louis proved reluctant to give

him a code. Louis was right to be suspicious--the codes are designed to be used in

the opposite direction. He knew that in the usual flow of things, the unknown

caller would be giving him a security code. This was the critical moment for

Vince, he hinge on which the entire success of his effort depended.

In the face of Louis's suspicion, Vince simply laid it on with manipulation, using

an appeal to sympathy ("going to the doctor"), and pressure ("I've got a stack to

do, it's almost 4 o'clock"), and manipulation ("Tell her you wouldn't give me the

code"). Cleverly, Vince didn't actually make a threat, he just implied one: If you

don't give me the security code, I won't send the customer information that your

co worker needs, and I'll tell her I would have sent it but you wouldn't cooperate.

Still, let's not be too hasty in blaming Louis. After all, the person on the phone

knew (or at least appeared to know) that co worker Angela had requested a fax.

The caller knew about the security codes, and knew they were identified by letter

designation. The caller said his branch manager was requiring it for greater

security. There didn't really seem any reason not to give him the verification he

was asking for.

Louis isn't alone. Bank employees give up security codes to social engineers

every day. Incredible but true.

There's a line in the sand where a private investigator's techniques stop being

legal and start being illegal. Vince stayed legal when he obtained the branch

number. He even stayed legal when he conned Louis into giving him two of the.day's security codes. He crossed the line when he had confidential information on

a bank customer faxed to him.

But for Vince and his employer, it's a low-risk crime. When you steal money or

goods, somebody will notice it's gone. When you steal information, most of the

time no one will notice because the information is still in their possession.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Verbal security codes are equivalent to passwords in providing a convenient and

reliable means of protecting data. But employees need to be knowledgeable about

the tricks that social engineers use, and trained not to give up the keys to the

kingdom.

COPS AS DUPES

For a shady private investigator or social engineer, there are frequent occasions

when it would be handy to know someone's driver's license number--for example,

if you want to assume another person's identity in order to obtain information

about her bank balances.

Short of lifting the person's wallet or peering over her shoulder at an opportune

moment, finding out the driver's license number ought to be next to impossible.

But for anyone with even modest social engineering skills, it's hardly a challenge.

One particular social engineer--Eric Mantini, I'll call him, needed to get driver's

license and vehicle registration numbers on a regular basis. Eric figured it was

unnecessarily increasing his risk to call the Department of Motor Vehicles

(DMV) and go through the same ruse time after time whenever he needed that

information. He wondered whether there wasn't some way to simplify the

process.

Probably no one had ever thought of it before, but he figured out a way

to get the information in a blink, whenever he wanted it. He did it by taking

advantage of a service provided by his state's Department of Motor Vehicles.

Many state DMVs (or whatever the department may be called in your state) make

otherwise-privileged information about citizens available to insurance firms,

private investigators, and certain other groups that the state legislature has

deemed entitled to share it for the good of commerce and the society at large.

The DMV, of course, has appropriate limitations on which types of data will be

given out. The insurance industry can get certain types of information from the

files, but not others. A different set of limitations applies to PIs, and so on.

For law enforcement officers, a different rule generally applies: The DMV will

supply any information in the records to any sworn peace officer who properly.identifies himself. In the state Eric then lived in, the required identification was a

Requestor Code issued by the DMV, along with the officer's driver's license

number. The DMV employee would always verify by matching the officer's

name against his driver's license number and one other piece of information--usually

date of birth-- before giving out any information.

What social engineer Eric wanted to do was nothing less than cloak himself in the

identity of a law enforcement officer. How did he manage that? By running a

reverse sting on the cops!

Eric's Sting

First he called telephone information and asked for the phone number of DMV

headquarters in the state capitol. He was given the number 503555-5000; that, of

course, is the number for calls from the general public. He then called a nearby

sheriff's station and asked for Teletype--the office where communications are

sent to and received from other law enforcement agencies, the national crime

database, local warrants, and so forth. When he reached Teletype, he said he was

looking for the phone number for law enforcement to use when calling the DMV

state headquarters.

"Who are you?" the police officer in Teletype asked.

"This is Al. I was calling 503-555-5753," he said. This was partly an assumption,

and partly a number he pulled out of thin air; certainly the special DMV office set

up to take law enforcement calls would be in the same area code as the number

gtyen out for the public to call, and it was almost as certain that the next three

digits, the prefix, would be the same. as well. All he really needed to find out was

the last four.

A sheriff's Teletype room doesn't get calls from the public. And the caller already

had most of the number. Obviously he was legitimate.

"It's 503-555-6127," the officer said.

So Eric now had the special phone number for law enforcement officers to call

the DMV. But just the one number wasn't enough to satisfy him; the office would

have a good many more than the single phone line, and Eric needed to know how

many lines there were, and the phone number of each.

The Switch

To carry out his plan, he needed to gain access to the telephone switch that

handled the law enforcement phone lines into DMV. He called the state

Telecommunications Department and claimed he was from Nortel, the.manufacturer of the DMS-100, one of the most widely used commercial

telephone switches. He said, "Can you please transfer me to one of the switch

technicians that works on the DMS-100?"

When he reached the technician, he claimed to be with the Nortel Technical

Assistance Support Center in Texas, and explained that they were creating a

master database to update all switches with the latest software upgrades. It would

all be done remotely--no need for any switch technician to participate. But they

needed the dial-in number to the switch so that they could perform the updates

directly from the Support Center.

It sounded completely plausible, and the technician gave Eric the phone number.

He could now dial directly into one of the state's telephone switches.

To defend against outside intruders, commercial switches of this type are

password-protected, just like every corporate computer network. Any good social

engineer with a phone-phreaking background knows that Nortel switches provide

a default account name for software updates: NTAS (the abbreviation for Nortel

Technical Assistance Support; not very subtle). But what about a password? Eric

dialed in several times, each time trying one of the obvious and commonly used

choices. Entering the same as the account name, NTAS, didn't work. Neither did

"helper." Nor did "patch."

Then he tried "update" . . . and he was in. Typical. Using an obvious, easily

guessed password is only very slightly better than having no password at all.

It helps to be up to speed in your field; Eric probably knew as much about that

switch and how to program and troubleshoot it as the technician. Once he was

able to access the switch as an authorized user, he would gain full control over

the telephone lines that were his target. From his computer, he queried the switch

for the phone number he had been given for law enforcement calls to the DMV,

555-6127. He found there were nineteen other phone lines into the same

department. Obviously they handled a high volume of calls.

For each incoming call, the switch was programmed to "hunt" through the twenty

lines until it found one that wasn't busy.

He picked line number eighteen in the sequence, and entered the code that added

call forwarding to that line. For the call-forwarding number, he entered the phone

number of his new, cheap, prepaid cell phone, the kind that drug dealers are so

fond of because they're inexpensive enough to throw away after the job is over..With call forwarding now activated on the eighteenth line, as soon as the office

got busy enough to have seventeen calls in progress, the next call to come in

would not ring in the DMV office but would instead be forwarded to Eric's cell

phone. He sat back and waited.

A Call to DMV

Shortly before 8 o'clock that morning, the cell phone rang. This part was the best,

the most delicious. Here was Eric, the social engineer, talking to a cop, someone

with the authority to come and arrest him, or get a search warrant and conduct a

raid to collect evidence against him.

And not just one cop would call, but a string of them, one after another. On one

occasion, Eric was sitting in a restaurant having lunch with friends, fielding a call

every five minutes or so, writing the information on a paper napkin using a

borrowed pen. HE still finds this hilarious.

But talking to police officers doesn't faze a good social engineer in the least. In

fact, the thrill of deceiving these law enforcement agencies probably added to

Eric s enjoyment of the act.

According to Eric, the calls went something like this:

"DMV, may I help you?"

"This is Detective Andrew Cole."

"Hi, detective. What can I do for you today?"

"I need a Soundex on driver's license 005602789," he might say, using the term

familiar in law enforcement to ask for a photo--useful, for example, when officers

are going out to arrest a suspect and want to know what he looks like.

"Sure, let me bring up the record," Eric would say. "And, Detective Cole, what's

your agency?"

"Jefferson County." And then Eric would ask the hot questions:

"Detective, what's your requestor code?

What's your driver's license number. "What's your date of birth"

The caller would give his personal identifying information. Eric would go

through some pretense of verifying the information, and then tell the caller that

the identifying information had been confirmed, and ask for the details of what

the caller wanted to find out from the DMV. He'd pretend to start looking up the

name, with the caller able to hear the clicking of the keys, and then say something

like, "Oh, damn, my computer just went down again. Sorry, detective, my

computer has been on the blink, all week. Would you mind calling back and

getting another clerk to help you?"

This way he'd end the call tying up the loose ends without arousing any suspicion

about why he wasn't able to assist the officer with his request. Meanwhile Eric.had a stolen identity--details he could use to obtain confidential DMV

information whenever he needed to.

After taking calls for a few hours and obtaining dozens of requestor codes, Eric

dialed into the switch and deactivated the call forwarding.

For months after that, he'd carry on the assignments jobbed out to him by

legitimate PI firms that didn't want to know how he was getting his information.

Whenever he needed to, he'd dial back into the switch, turn on call forwarding,

and gather another stack of police officer credentials.

Analyzing the Con

Let's run a playback on the ruses Eric pulled on a series of people to make this

deceit work. In the first successful step, he got a sheriff's deputy in a Teletype

room to give out a confidential DMV phone number to a complete stranger,

accepting the man as a deputy without requesting any verification.

Then someone at the state Telecom Department did the same thing, accepting

Eric's claim that he was with an equipment manufacturer, and providing the

stranger with a phone number for dialing into the telephone switch serving the

DMV.

Eric was able to get into the switch in large measure because of weak security

practices on the part of the switch manufacturer in using the same account name

on all their switches. That carelessness made it a walk in the park for the social

engineer to guess the password, knowing once again that switch technicians, just

like almost everybody else, choose passwords that will be a cinch for them to

remember.

With access to the switch, he set up call forwarding from one of the DMV phone

lines for law enforcement to his own cell phone.

And then, the capper and most blatant part, he conned one law enforcement

officer after another into revealing not only their requestor codes but their own

personal identifying information, giving Eric the ability to impersonate them.

While there was certainly technical knowledge required to pull off this stunt, it

could not have worked without the help of a series of people who had no clue that

they were talking to an imposter.

This story was another illustration of the phenomenon of why people don't ask

"Why me?" Why would the Teletype officer give this information to some

sheriff's deputy he didn't know--or, in this case, a stranger passing himself off as.a sheriff's deputy--instead of suggesting he get the information from a fellow

deputy or his own sergeant? Again, the only answer I can offer is that people

rarely ask this question. It doesn't occur to them to ask? They don't want to sound

challenging and unhelpful? Maybe. Any further explanation would just be

guesswork. But social engineers don't care why; they only care that this little fact

makes it easy to get information that otherwise might be a challenge to obtain.

MITNICK MESSAGE

If you have a telephone switch at your company facilities, what would the person

in charge do if he received a call from the vendor, asking for the dial-in number?

And by the way, has that person ever changed the default password for the

switch? Is that password an easy-to-guess word found in any dictionary?

PREVENTING THE CON

A security code, properly used, adds a valuable layer of protection. A security

code improperly used can be worse than none at all because it gives the illusion

of security where it doesn't really exist. What good are codes if your employees

don't keep them. secret?

Any company with a need for verbal security codes needs to spell out clearly for

its employees when and how the codes are used. Properly trained, the character in

the first story in this chapter would not have had to rely on his instincts, easily

overcome, when asked to give a security code to a stranger. He sensed that he

should not be asked for this information under the circumstances, but lacking a

clear security policy--and good common sense--he readily gave in.

Security procedures should also set up steps to follow when an employee fields

an inappropriate request for a security code. All employees should be trained to

immediately report any request for authentication credentials, such as a daily

code or password, made under suspicious circumstances. They should also report

when an attempt to verify the identity of a requestor doesn't check out.

At the very least, the employee should record the caller's name, phone number,

and office or department, and then hang up. Before calling back he should verify

that the organization really does have an employee of that name, and that the call

back phone number matches the phone number in the on-line or hard-copy

company directory. Most of the time, this simple tactic will be all that's needed to

verify that the caller is who he says he is.

Verifying becomes a bit trickier when the company has a published phone

directory instead of an on-line version. People get hired; people leave; people.change departments, job positions, and phone. The hard-copy directory is already

out of date the day after it's published, even before being distributed. Even on-line

directories can't always be relied on, because social engineers know how to

modify them. If an employee can't verify the phone number from an independent

source, she should be instructed to verify by some other means, such as

contacting the employee's manager..Part 3

Intruder Alert.Chapter 10

Entering the Premises

Why is it so easy for an outsider to assume the identity of a company employee

and carry off an impersonation so convincingly that even people who are highly

security conscious are taken in? Why is it so easy to dupe individuals who may

be fully aware of security procedures, suspicious of people they don't personally

know, and protective of their company's interests?

Ponder these questions as you read the stories in this chapter.

THE EMBARRASSED SECURITY GUARD

Date/Time: Tuesday, October 17, 2:16 A.M.

Place: Skywatcher Aviation, Inc. manufacturing plant on the outskirts of Tucson,

Arizona.

The Security Guard's Story

Hearing his leather heels click against the floor in the halls of the nearly deserted

plant made Leroy Greene feel much better than spending the night hours of his

watch in front of the video monitors in the security office. There he wasn't

allowed to do anything but stare at the screens, not even read a magazine or his

leather-bound Bible. You just had to sit there looking at the displays of still

images where nothing ever moved.

But walking the halls, he was at least stretching his legs, and when he

remembered to throw his arms and shoulders into the walk, it got him a little

exercise, too. Although it didn't really count very much as exercise for a man who

had played right tackle on the All-City champion high school football team. Still,

he thought, a job is a job.

He turned the southwest corner and started along the gallery overlooking the half-mile-

long production floor. He glanced down and saw two people walking past

the line of partly built copters. The pair stopped and seemed to be pointing things

out to each other. A strange sight at this time of night. 'Better check, "he thought.

Leroy headed for a staircase that would bring him onto the production-line floor

behind the pair, and they didn't sense his approach until he stepped alongside.

"Morning. Can I see your security badges, please," he said. Leroy always tried to

keep his voice soft at moments like this; he knew that the sheer size of him could

seem threatening.."Hi, Leroy," one of them said, reading the name off his badge. "I'm Tom Stilton,

from the Marketing office at corporate in Phoenix. I'm in town for meetings and

wanted to show my friend here how the world's greatest helicopters get built."

"Yes, sir. Your badge, please," Leroy said. He couldn't help noticing how young

they seemed. The Marketing guy looked barely out of high school, the other one

had hair down to his shoulders and looked about fifteen.

The one with the haircut reached into his pocket for his badge, then started

patting all his pockets. Leroy was suddenly beginning to have a bad feeling about

this. "Damn," the guy said. "Must've left it in the car. I can get it--just take me ten

minutes to go out to the parking lot and back."

Leroy had his pad out by this time. "What'd you say your name was, sr. he asked,

and carefully wrote down the response. Then he asked them to go with him to the

Security Office. On the elevator to the third floor, Tom chatted about having been

with the company for only six months and hoped he wasn't going to get in any

trouble for this.

In the Security monitoring room, the two others on the night shift with Leroy

joined him in questioning the pair. Stilton gave his telephone number, and said

his boss was Judy Underwood and gave her telephone number, and the

information all checked out on the computer. Leroy took the other two security

people aside and they talked about what to do. Nobody wanted to get this wrong;

all three agreed they better call the guy's boss even though it would mean waking

her in the middle of the night.

Leroy called Mrs. Underwood himself, explained who he was and did she have a

Mr. Tom Stilton working for her? She sounded like she was still half-asleep.

"Yes," she said.

"Well, we found him down on the production line at 2:30 in the morning with no

ID badge."

Mrs. Underwood said, "Let me talk to him."

Stilton got on the phone and said, "Judy, I'm really sorry about these guys waking

you up in the middle of the night. I hope you're not going to

hold this against me."

He listened and then said, "It was just that I had to be here in the morning

anyway, for that meeting on the new press release. Anyway, did you get the email

about the Thompson deal? We need to meet with Jim on Monday morning so we

don't lose this. And I'm still having lunch with you on Tuesday, right?".He listened a bit more and said good-bye and hung up.

That caught Leroy by surprise; he had thought he'd get the phone back so the lady

could tell him everything was okay. He wondered if maybe he should call her

again and ask, but thought better of it. He had already bothered her once in the

middle of the night; if he called a second time, maybe she might get annoyed and

complain to his boss. "Why make waves?" he thought.

Okay if I show my friend the rest of the production line? Stilton asked Leroy

You want to come along, keep an eye on us ?

"Go on, Leroy said. "Look around. Just don't forget your badge next time. And let

Security know if you need to be on the plant floor after hours--it's the rule."

I'll remember that, Leroy," Stilton said. And they left.

Hardly ten minutes had gone by before the phone rang in the Security Office.

Mrs. Underwood was on the line. "Who was that guy?!" she wanted to know. She

said she kept trying to ask questions but he just kept on talking about having

lunch with her and she doesn't know who the hell he is.

The security guys called the lobby and the guard at the gate to the parking lot.

Both reported the two young men had left some minutes before.

Telling the story later, Leroy always finished by saying, "Lordy, did boss chew

me up one side and down the other. I'm lucky I still have a job."

Joe Harper's Story

Just to see what he could get away with, seventeen-year-old Joe Harper had been

sneaking into buildings for more than a year, sometimes in the daytime,

sometimes at night. The son of a musician and a cocktail waitress, both working

the night shift, Joe had too much time by himself. His story of that same incident

sheds instructive light on how it all happened.

I have this friend Kenny who thinks he wants to be a helicopter pilot. He asked

me, could I get him into the Skywatcher factory to see the production line where

they make the choppers. He knows I've got into other places before. It's an

adrenaline rush to see if you can slip into places you're not supposed to be.

But you don't just walk into a factory or office building. Got to think it through,

do a lot of planning, and do a full reconnaissance on the target. Check the

company's Web page for names and titles, reporting structure, and telephone

numbers. Read press clippings and magazine articles. Meticulous research is my.own brand of caution, so I could talk to anybody that challenged me, with as

much knowledge as any employee.

So where to start? First I looked up on the Internet to see where the company had

offices, and saw the corporate headquarters was in Phoenix. Perfect. I called and

asked for Marketing; every company has a marketing department. A lady

answered, and I said I was with Blue Pencil Graphics and we wanted to see if we

could interest them in using our services and who would I talk to. She said that

would be Tom Stilton. I asked for his phone number and she said they didn't give

out that information but she could put me through. The call rang into voice mail,

and his message said, "This is Tom Stilton in Graphics, extension 3147, please

leave a message." Sure--they don't give out extensions, but this guy leaves his

right on his voice mail. So that was cool. Now I had a name and extension.

Another call, back to the same office. "Hi, I was looking for Tom Stilton. He's

not in. I'd like to ask his boss a quick question." The boss was out, too, but by the

time I was finished, I knew the boss's name. And she had nicely left her extension

number on her voice mail, too.

I could probably get us past the lobby guard with no sweat, but I've driven by that

plant and I thought I remembered a fence around the parking lot. A fence means a

guard who checks you when you try to drive in. And at night, they might be

writing down license numbers, too, so I'd have to buy an old license plate at a flea

market.

But first I'd have to get the phone number in the guard shack. I waited a little so if

I got the same operator when I dialed back in, she wouldn't recognize my voice.

After a bit I called and said, "We've got a complaint that the phone at the Ridge

Road guard shack has reported intermittent problems--are they still having

trouble?" She said she didn't know but would connect me.

The guy answered, "Ridge Road gate, this is Ryan." I said, "Hi, Ryan, this is Ben.

Were you having problems with your phones there?" He's just a low-paid security

guard but I guess he had some training because he right away said, "Ben who--

what's your last name?" I just kept right on as if I hadn't even heard him.

"Somebody reported a problem earlier."

I could hear him holding the phone away and calling out, "Hey, Bruce, Roger,

was there a problem with this phone. He came back on and said, "No, no

problems we know about."

"How many phone lines do you have there?"

He had forgotten about my name. "Two," he said. "Which one are you on now?"

"3140.".Gotcha! "And they're both working okay?"

"Seems like."

Okay, I said. Listen, Tom, if you have any phone problems, just call us in

Telecom any time. We're here to help."

My buddy and I decided to visit the plant the very next night. Late that afternoon

I called the guard booth, using the name of the Marketing guy. I said, "Hi, this is

Tom Stilton in Graphics. We're on a crash deadline and I have a couple of guys

driving into town to help out. Probably won't be here till one or two in the

morning. Will you still be on then?"

He was happy to say that, no, he got off at midnight.

I said, "Well, just leave a note for the next guy, okay? When two guys show up

and say they've come to see Tom Stilton, just wave 'em on in--okay?"

Yes, he said, that was fine. He took down my name, department, and extension

number and said he'd take care of it.

We drove up to the gate a little after two, I gave Tom Stilton's name, and a sleepy

guard just pointed to the door we should go in and where I should park.

When we walked into the building, there was another guard station in the lobby,

with the usual book for after-hours sign-ins. I told the guard I had a report that

needed to be ready in the morning, and this friend of mine wanted to see the

plant. "He's crazy about helicopters," I said "Thinks he wants to learn to pilot

one." He asked me for my badge. I reached into a pocket, then patted around and

said I must have left it in car; I'll go get it. I said, "It'll take about ten minutes."

He said, Never mind, it's okay, just sign in."

Walking down that production line--what a gas. Until that tree-trunk of a Leroy

stopped us.

In the security office, I figured somebody who didn't really belong would look

nervous and frightened. When things get tight, I just start sounding like I'm really

steamed. Like I'm really who I claimed to be and it's annoying they don't believe

me.

When they started talking about maybe they should call the lady I said was my

boss and went to get her home phone number from the computer, I stood there

thinking, "Good time to just make a break for it." But there was that parking-lot

gate--even if we got out of the building, they'd close the gate and we'd never

make it out..When Leroy called the lady who was Stilton's boss and then gave me the phone,

the lady started shouting at me "Who is this, who are you!" and I just kept on

talking like we were having a nice conversation, and then hung up.

How long does it take to find somebody who can give you a company phone

number in the middle of the night? I figured we had less than fifteen minutes to

get out of there before that lady was ringing the security office and putting a bug

in their ears.

We got out of there as fast as we could without looking like we were in a hurry.

Sure was glad when the guy at the gate just waved us through.

Analyzing the Con

It's worth noting that in the real incident this story is based on, the intruders

actually were teenagers. The intrusion was a lark, just to see if they could get

away with it. But if it was so easy for a pair of teenagers, it would have been even

easier for adult thieves, industrial spies, or terrorists.

How did three experienced security officers allow a pair of intruders to just walk

away? And not just any intruders, but a pair so young that any reasonable person

should have been very suspicious?

Leroy was appropriately suspicious, at first. He was correct in taking them to the

Security Office, and in questioning the guy who called himself Tom Stilton and

checking the names and phone numbers he gave. He was certainly correct in

making the phone call to the supervisor.

But in the end he was taken in by the young man's air of confidence and

indignation. It wasn't the behavior he would expect from a thief or intruder--only

a real employee would have acted that way.., or so he assumed. Leroy should

have been trained to count on solid identification, not perceptions.

Why wasn't he more suspicious when the young man hung up the phone without

handing it back so Leroy could hear the confirmation directly from Judy

Underwood and receive her assurance that the kid had a reason for being in the

plant so late at night?

Leroy was taken in by a ruse so bold that it should have been obvious. But

consider the moment from his perspective: a high-school graduate, concerned for

his job, uncertain whether he might get in trouble for bothering a company

manager for the second time in the middle of the night. If you had been in his

shoes, would you have made the follow-up call?.But of course, a second phone call wasn't the only possible action. What else

could the security guard have done?

Even before placing the phone call, he could have asked both of the pair to show

some kind of picture identification; they drove to the plant, so at least one of

them should have a driver's license. The fact that they had originally given phony

names would have been immediately obvious (a professional would have come

equipped with fake ID, but these teenagers had not taken that precaution). In any

case, Leroy should have examined their identification credentials and written

down the information. If they both insisted they had no identification, he should

then have walked them o the car to retrieve the company ID badge that "Tom

Stilton" claimed he had left there.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Manipulative people usually have very attractive personalities. They are typically

fast on their feet and quite articulate. Social engineers are also skilled at

distracting people's thought processes so that they cooperate. To think that any

one particular person is not vulnerable to this manipulation is to underestimate

the skill and the killer instinct of the social engineer.

A good social engineer, on the other hand, never underestimates his adversary.

Following the phone call, one of the security people should have stayed with the

pair until they left the building. And then walked them to their car and written

down the license-plate number. If he had been observant enough, he would have

noted that the plate (the one that the attacker had purchased at a flea market) did

not have a valid registration sticker - and that should have been reason enough to

detain the pair for further investigation.

DUMPSTER DIVING

Dumpster diving is a term that describes pawing through a target's garbage in

search of valuable information. The amount of information you can learn about a

target is astounding.

Most people don't give much thought to what they're discarding at home: phone

bills, credit card statements, medical prescription bottles, bank statements, work-related

materials, and so much more.

At work, employees must be made aware that people do look through trash to

obtain information that may benefit them.

During my high school years, I used to go digging through the trash behind the

local phone company buildings--often alone but occasionally with friends who

shared an interest in learning more about the telephone company. Once you.became a seasoned Dumpster diver, you learn a few tricks, such as how to make

special efforts to avoid the bags from the restrooms, and the necessity of wearing

gloves.

Dumpster diving isn't enjoyable, but the payoff was extraordinary-- internal

company telephone directories, computer manuals, employee lists, discarded

printouts showing how to program switching equipment, and more--all there for

the taking.

I'd schedule visits for nights when new manuals were being issued, because the

trash containers would have plenty of old ones, thoughtlessly thrown away. And

I'd go at other odd times as well, looking for any memos, letters, reports, and so

forth, that might offer some interesting gems of information.

On arriving I'd find some cardboard boxes, pull them out and set them aside. If

anyone challenged me, which happened now and then, I'd say that a friend was

moving and I was just looking for boxes to help him pack. The guard never

noticed all the documents I had put in the boxes to take home. In some cases, he'd

tell me to get lost, so I'd just move to another phone company central office.

LINGO

DUMPSTER DRIVING Going through a company's garbage (often in an

outside and vulnerable Dumpster) to find discarded information that either itself

has value, or provides a tool to use in a social engineering attack, such as internal

phone numbers or titles

I don't know what it's like today, but back then it was easy to tell which bags

might contain something of interest. The floor sweepings and cafeteria garbage

were loose in the large bags, while the office wastebaskets were all lined with

white disposable trash bags, which the cleaning crew would lift out one by one

and wrap a tie around.

One time, while searching with some friends, we came up with some sheets of

paper torn up by hand. And not just torn up: someone had gone to the trouble of

ripping the sheets into tiny pieces, all conveniently thrown out in a single five-gallon

trash bag. We took the bag to a local donut shop, dumped the pieces out on

a table, and started assembling them one by one.

We were all puzzle-doers, so this offered the stimulating challenge of a giant

jigsaw puzzle . . . but turned out to have more than a childish reward. When done,

we had pieced together the entire account name and password list for one of the

company's critical computer systems..Were our Dumpster-diving exploits worth the risk and the effort? You bet they

were. Even more than you would think, because the risk is zero. It was true then

and still true today: As long as you're not trespassing, poring through someone

else's trash is 100 percent legal.

Of course, phone phreaks and hackers aren't the only ones with their heads in

trash cans. Police departments around the country paw through trash regularly,

and a parade of people from Mafia dons to petty embezzlers have been convicted

based in part on evidence gathered from their rubbish. Intelligence agencies,

including our own, have resorted to this method for years.

It may be a tactic too low down for James Bond--movie-goers would much rather

watch him outfoxing the villain and bedding a beauty than standing up to his

knees in garbage. Real-life spies are less squeamish when something of value

may be bagged among the banana peels and coffee grounds, the newspapers and

grocery lists. Especially if gathering the information doesn't put them in harm's

way.

Cash for Trash

Corporations play the Dumpster-diving game, too. Newspapers had a field day in

June 2000, reporting that Oracle Corporation (whose CEO, Larry Ellison, is

probably the nation's most outspoken foe of Microsoft) had hired an investigative

firm that had been caught with their hands in the cookie jar. It seems the

investigators wanted trash from a Microsoft-supported lobbying outfit, ACT, but

they didn't want to risk getting caught. According to press reports, the

investigative firm sent in a woman who offered the janitors $60 to let her have

the ACT trash. They turned her down. She was back the next night, upping the

offer to $500 for the cleaners and $200 for the supervisor.

The janitors turned her down and then turned her in.

Leading on-line journalist Declan McCullah, taking a leaf from literature, titled

his Wired News story on the episode, "'Twas Oracle That Spied on MS." Time

magazine, nailing Oracle's Ellison, titled their article simply "Peeping Larry."

Analyzing the Con

Based on my own experience and the experience of Oracle, you might wonder

why anybody would bother taking the risk of stealing someone's trash.

The answer, I think, is that the risk is nil and the benefits can be substantial.

Okay, maybe trying to bribe the janitors increases the chance of consequences,

but for anyone who's willing to get a little dirty, bribes aren't necessary..For a social engineer, Dumpster diving has its benefits. He can get enough

information to guide his assault against the target company, including memos,

meeting agendas, letters and the like that reveal names, departments, titles, phone

numbers, and project assignments. Trash can yield company organizational

charts, information about corporate structure, travel schedules, and so on. All

those details might seem trivial to insiders, yet they may be highly valuable

information to an attacker.

Mark Joseph Edwards, in his book Internet Security with Windows NT, talks

about "entire reports discarded because of typos, passwords written on scraps of

paper, 'While you were out' messages with phone numbers, whole file folders

with documents still in them, diskettes and tapes that weren't erased or destroyed--

all of which could help a would-be intruder."

The writer goes on to ask, "And who are those people on your cleaning crew?

You've decided that the cleaning crew won't [be permitted to] enter the computer

room but don't forget the other trash cans. If federal agencies deem it necessary to

do background checks on people who have access to their wastebaskets and

shredders, you probably should as well."

MITNICK MESSAGE

Your trash may be your enemy's treasure. We don't give much consideration to

the materials we discard in our personal lives, so why should we believe people

have a different attitude in the workplace? It all comes down to educating the

workforce about the danger (unscrupulous people digging for valuable

information) and the vulnerability (sensitive information not being shredded or

properly erased).

THE HUMILIATED BOSS

Nobody thought anything about it when Harlan Fortis came to work on Monday

morning as usual at the County Highway Department, and said he'd left home in

a hurry and forgotten his badge. The security guard had seen Harlan coming in

and going out every weekday for the two years she had been working there. She

had him sign for a temporary employee's badge, gave it to him, and he went on

his way.

It wasn't until two days later that all hell started breaking loose. The

story spread through the entire department like wildfire. Half the people who

heard it said it couldn't be true. Of the rest, nobody seemed to know whether to

laugh out loud or to feel sorry for the poor soul..After all, George Adamson was a kind and compassionate person, the best head

of department they'd ever had. He didn't deserve to have this happen to him.

Assuming that the story was true, of course.

The trouble had begun when George called Harlan into his office late one Friday

and told him, as gently as he could, that come Monday Harlan would be reporting

to a new job. With the Sanitation Department. To Harlan, this wasn't like being

fired. It was worse; it was humiliating. He wasn't going to take it lying down.

That same evening he seated himself on his porch to watch the homeward- bound

traffic. At last he spotted the neighborhood boy named David who everyone

called "The War Games Kid" going by on his moped on the way home from high

school. He stopped David, gave him a Code Red Mountain Dew he had bought

especially for the purpose, and offered him a deal: the latest video game player

and six games in exchange for some computer help and a promise of keeping his

mouth shut.

After Harlan explained the project - without giving any of the compromising

specifics--David agreed. He described what he wanted Harlan to do. He was to

buy a modem, go into the office, find somebody's computer where there was a

spare phone jack nearby, and plug in the modem. Leave the modem under the

desk where nobody would be likely to see it. Then came the risky part. Harlan

had to sit down at the computer, install a remote-access software package, and get

it running. Any moment the man who worked in the office might show up, or

someone might walk by and see him in another person's office. He was so uptight

that he could hardly read the instructions that the kid had written down for him.

But he got it done, and slipped out of the building without being noticed.

Planting the Bomb

David stopped over after dinner that night. The two sat down at Harlan's

computer and within in a few minutes the boy had dialed into the modem,

gained access, and reached George Adamson's machine. Not very difficult, since

George never had time for precautionary things like changing

passwords, and was forever asking this person or that to download or email a file

for him. In time, everyone in the office knew his password. A bit of hunting

turned up the file called BudgetSlides2002.ppt, which the boy downloaded

onto Harlan's computer. Harlan then told the kid to go on home, and come

back in a couple of hours.

When David returned, Harlan asked him to reconnect to the Highway

Department computer system and put the same file back where they had

found it, overwriting the earlier version. Harlan showed David the video

game player, and promised that if things went well, he'd have it the next day..Surprising George

You wouldn't think that something sounding as dull as budget hearings

would be of much interest to anyone, but the meeting chamber of the County

Council was packed, filled with reporters, representatives of special interest

groups, members of the public, and even two television news crews.

George always felt much was at stake for him in these sessions. The County

Council held the purse strings, and unless George could put on a convincing

presentation, the Highways budget would be slashed. Then everyone would

start complaining about potholes and stuck traffic lights and dangerous

intersections, and blaming him, and life would be miser able for the whole

coming year. But when he was introduced that evening, he stood up feeling

confident. He had worked six weeks on this presentation and the PowerPoint

visuals, which he had tried out on his wife, his top staff people, and some

respected friends. Everyone agreed it was his best presentation ever.

The first three PowerPoint images played well. For a change, every Council

member was paying attention. He was making his points effectively.

And then all at once everything started going wrong. The fourth image was

supposed to be a beautiful photo at sunset of the new highway extension opened

last year. Instead it was something else, something very embarrassing. A

photograph out of a magazine like Penthouse or Hustler. He could hear the

audience gasp as he hurriedly hit the button on his laptop to move to the next

image.

This one was worse. Not a thing was left to the imagination.

He was still trying to click to another image when someone in the audience

pulled out the power plug to the projector while the chairman banged loudly with

his gavel and shouted above the din that the meeting was adjourned.

Analyzing the Con

Using a teenage hacker's expertise, a disgruntled employee managed to access the

computer of the head of his department, download an important PowerPoint

presentation, and replace some of the slides with images certain to cause grave

embarrassment. Then he put the presentation back on the man's computer.

With the modem plugged into a jack and connected to one of the office

computers, the young hacker was able to dial in from the outside. The kid had set

up the remote access software in advance so that, once connected to the

computer, he would have full access to every file stored on the entire system.

Since the computer was connected to the organization's network and he already.knew the boss's username and password, he could easily gain access to the boss's

files.

Including the time to scan in the magazine images, the entire effort had taken

only a few hours. The resulting damage to a good man's reputation was beyond

imagining.

MITNICK MESSAGE

The vast majority of employees who are transferred, fired, or let go in a

downsizing are never a problem. Yet it only takes one to make a company

realize too late what steps they could have taken to prevent disaster.

Experience and statistics have clearly shown that the greatest threat to the

enterprise is from insiders. It's the insiders who have intimate knowledge of

where the valuable information resides, and where to hit the company to cause

the most harm.

THE PROMOTION SEEKER

Late in the morning of a pleasant autumn day, Peter Milton walked into the lobby

of the Denver regional offices of Honorable Auto Parts, a national parts

wholesaler for the automobile aftermarket. He waited at the reception desk while

the young lady signed in a visitor, gave driving directions to a caller, and dealt

with the UPS man, all more or less at the same time.

"So how did you learn to do so many things at once?" Pete said when she had

time to help him. She smiled, obviously pleased he had noticed. He was from

Marketing in the Dallas office, he told her, and said that Mike Talbott from

Atlanta field sales was going to be meeting him. "We have a client to visit

together this afternoon," he explained. I'll just wait here in the lobby."

"Marketing." She said the word almost wistfully, and Pete smiled at her, waiting

to hear what was coming. "If I could go to college, that's what I'd take," she said.

"I'd love to work in Marketing."

He smiled again. "Kaila," he said, reading her name off the sign on the counter,

"We have a lady in the Dallas office who was a secretary. She got herself moved

over to Marketing. That was three years ago, and now she's an assistant

marketing manager, making twice what she was."

Kaila looked starry-eyed. He went on, "Can you use a computer?" "Sure," she

said.

"How would you like me to put your name in for a secretary's job in Marketing.

She beamed. "For that I'd even move to Dallas."

"You're going to love Dallas," he said. "I can't promise an opening right away,

but I'll see what I can do.".She thought that this nice man in the suit and tie and with the neatly trimmed,

well-combed hair might make a big difference in her working life.

Pete sat down across the lobby, opened his laptop, and started getting some work

done. After ten or fifteen minutes, he stepped back up to the counter. "Listen," he

said, "it looks like Mike must've been held up. Is there a conference room where I

could sit and check my emails while I'm waiting?"

Kaila called the man who coordinated the conference room scheduling and

arranged for Pete to use one that wasn't booked. Following a pattern picked up

from Silicon Valley companies (Apple was probably the first to do this) some of

the conference rooms were named after cartoon characters, others after restaurant

chains or movie stars or comic book heroes. He was told to look for the Minnie

Mouse room. She had him sign in, and gave him directions to find Minnie

Mouse.

He located the room, settled in, and connected his laptop to the Ethernet port.

Do you get the picture yet?

Right--the intruder had connected to the network behind the corporate firewall.

Anthony's Story

I guess you could call Anthony Lake a lazy businessman. Or maybe "bent" comes

closer.

Instead of working for other people, he had decided he wanted to go to work for

himself; he wanted to open a store, where he could be at one place all day and not

have to run all over the countryside. Only he wanted to have a business that he

could be as sure as possible he could make money at.

What kind of store? That didn't take long to figure out. He knew about repairing

cars, so an auto parts store.

And how do you build in a guarantee of success? The answer came to him in a

flash: convince auto parts wholesaler Honorable Auto Parts to sell him all the

merchandise he needed at their cost.

Naturally they wouldn't do this willingly. But Anthony knew how to con people,

his friend Mickey knew about breaking into other people's computers, and

together they worked out a clever plan.

That autumn day he convincingly passed himself off as an employee named Peter

Milton, and he had conned his way inside the Honorable Auto Parts offices and.had already plugged his laptop into their network. So far, so good, but that was

only the first step. What he still had to do wouldn't be easy, especially since

Anthony had set himself a fifteen-minute time limit--any longer and he figured

that the risk of discovery would be too high.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Train your people not to judge a book solely by its cover--just because someone

is well-dressed and well-groomed he shouldn't be any more believable.

In an earlier phone call pretexting as a support person from their computer

supplier, he had put on a song-and-dance act. "Your company has purchased a

two-year support plan and we're putting you in the database so we can know

when a software program you're using has come out with a patch or a new

updated version. So I need to have you tell me what applications you're using."

The response gave him a list of programs, and an accountant friend identified the

one called MAS 90 as the target--the program that would hold their list of

vendors and the discount and payment terms for each.

With that key knowledge, he next used a software program to identifiy," all the

working hosts on the network, and it didn't take him long to locate the correct

server used by the Accounting department. From the arsenal of hacker tools on

his laptop, he launched one program and used it to identify all of the authorized

users on the target server. With another, he then ran a list of commonly used

passwords, such as "blank," and "password" itself. "Password" worked. No

surprise there. People just lose all creativity when it comes to choosing

passwords.

Only six minutes gone, and the game was half over. He was in.

Another three minutes to very carefully add his new company, address, phone

number, and contact name to the list of customers. And then for the crucial entry,

the one that would make all the difference, the entry that said all items were to be

sold to him at 1 percent over Honorable Auto Parts' cost.

In slightly under ten minutes, he was done. He stopped long enough to tell Kaila

thanks, he was through checking his emails. And he had reached Mike Talbot,

change of plans, he was on the way to a meeting at a client's office. And he

wouldn't forget about recommending her for that job in Marketing, either.

Analyzing the Con

The intruder who called himself Peter Milton used two psychological subversion

techniques--one planned, the other improvised on the spur of the moment..He dressed like a management worker earning good money. Suit and tie, hair

carefully styled--these seem like small details, but they make an impression. I

discovered this myself, inadvertently. In a short time as a programmer at GTE

California--a major telephone company no longer in existence--I discovered that

if I came in one day without a badge, neatly dressed but casual--say, sports shirt,

chinos, and Dockers--I'd be stopped and questioned. Where's your badge, who are

you, where do you work? Another day I'd arrive, still without a badge but in a

suit and tie, looking very corporate. I'd use a variation of the age-old

piggybacking technique, blending in with a crowd of people as they walk into a

building or a secure entrance. I would latch onto some people as they approached

the main entrance, and walk in chatting with the crowd as if I was one of them. I

walked past, and even if the guards noticed I was badge-less, they wouldn't

bother me because I looked like management and I was with people who were

wearing badges.

From this experience, I recognized how predictable the behavior of security

guards is. Like the rest of us, they were making judgments based on appearances--

a serious vulnerability that social engineers learn to take advantage of.

The attacker's second psychological weapon came into play when he noticed the

unusual effort that the receptionist was making. Handling several things at once,

she didn't get testy but managed to make everyone feel they had her full attention.

He took this as the mark of someone interested in getting ahead, in proving

herself. And then when he claimed to work in the Marketing department, he

watched to see her reaction, looking for clues to indicate if he was establishing a

rapport with her. He was. To the attacker, this added up to someone he could

manipulate through a promise of trying to help her move into a better job. (Of

course, if she had said she wanted to go into the Accounting department, he

would have claimed he had contacts for getting her a job there, instead.)

Intruders are also fond of another psychological weapon used in this story:

building trust with a two-stage attack. He first used that chatty conversation about

the job in Marketing, and he also used "name- dropping"--giving the name of

another employee--a real person, incidentally, just as the name he himself used

was the name of a real employee.

He could have followed up the opening conversation right away with a request to

get into a conference room. But instead he sat down for a while and pretended to

work, supposedly waiting for his associate, another way of allaying any possible

suspicions because an intruder wouldn't hang around. He didn't hang around for

very long, though; social engineers know better than to stay at the scene of the

crime any longer than necessary..MITNICK MESSAGE

Allowing a stranger into an area where he can plug a laptop into the corporate

network increases the risk of a security incident. It's perfectly reasonable for an

employee, especially one from offsite, to want to check his or her email from a

conference room, but unless the visitor is established as a trusted employee or the

network is segmented to prevent unauthorized connections, this may be the weak

link that allows company files to be compromised.

Just for the record: By the laws on the books at the time of this writing, Anthony

had not committed a crime when he entered the lobby. He had not committed a

crime when he used the name of a real employee. He had not committed a crime

when he talked his way into the conference room. He had not committed a crime

when he plugged into the company's network and searched for the target

computer.

Not until he actually broke in to the computer system did he break the law.

SNOOPING ON KEVIN

Many years ago when I was working in a small business, I began to notice that

each time I walked into the office that I shared with the three other computer

people who made up the IT department, this one particular guy (Joe, I'll call him

here) would quickly toggle the display on his computer to a different window. I

immediately recognized this as suspicious. When it happened two more times the

same day, I was sure something was going on that I should know about. What

was this guy up to that he didn't want me to see?

Joe's computer acted as a terminal to access the company's minicomputers, so I

installed a monitoring program on the VAX minicomputer hat allowed me to spy

on what he was doing. The program acted as if a TV camera was looking over his

shoulder, showing me exactly what he was seeing on his computer.

My desk was next to Joe's; I turned my monitor as best I could to partly

mask his view, but he could have looked over at any moment and realized I

was spying on him. Not a problem; he was too enthralled in what he was

doing to notice.

What I saw made my jaw drop. I watched, fascinated, as the bastard called up

my payroll data. He was looking up my salary! I had only been there a few

months at the time and I guessed Joe couldn't stand the idea that I might

have been making more than he was.

A few minutes later I saw that he was downloading hacker tools used by less

experienced hackers who don't know enough about programming to devise the.tools for themselves. So Joe was clueless, and had no idea that one of American's

most experienced hackers was sitting right next to him. I thought it was hilarious.

He already had the information about my pay; so it was too late to stop him.

Besides, any employee with computer access at the IRS or the Social Security

Administration can look your salary up. I sure didn't want to tip my hand by

letting him know I'd found out what he was up to. My main goal at the time was

maintaining a low profile, and a good social engineer doesn't advertise his

abilities and knowledge. You always want people to underestimate you, not see

you as a threat.

So I let it go, and laughed to myself that Joe thought he knew some secret about

me, when it was the other way around: I had the upper hand by knowing what he

had been up to.

In time I discovered that all three of my co-workers in the IT group amused

themselves by looking up the take-home pay of this or that cute secretary or (for

the one girl in the group) neat-looking guy they had spotted. And they were all

finding out the salary and bonuses of anybody at the company they were curious

about, including senior management.

Analyzing the Con

This story illustrates an interesting problem. The payroll files were accessible to

the people who had the responsibility of maintaining the company's computer

systems. So it all comes down to a personnel issue: deciding who can be trusted.

In some cases, IT staff might find it irresistible to snoop around. And they have

the ability to do so because they have privileges allowing them to bypass access

controls on those files.

One safeguard would be to audit any access to particularly sensitive files,

such as payroll. Of course, anyone with the requisite privileges could disable

auditing or possibly remove any entries that would point back to them, but each

additional step takes more effort to hide on the part of an unscrupulous employee.

PREVENTING THE CON

From pawing through your trash to duping a security guard or receptionist, social

engineers can physically invade your corporate space. But you'll be glad to hear

that there are preventive measures you can take.

Protection After Hours

All employees who arrive for work without their badges should be required to

stop at the lobby desk or security office to obtain a temporary badge for the day.

The incident in the first story of this chapter could have come to a much different.conclusion if the company security guards had had a specific set of steps to

follow when encountering anyone without the required employee badge.

For companies or areas within a company where security is not a high-level

concern, it may not be important to insist that every person have a badge visible

at all times. But in companies with sensitive areas, this should be a standard

requirement, rigidly enforced. Employees must be trained and motivated to

challenge people who do not display a badge, and higher-level employees must

be taught to accept such challenges without causing embarrassment to the person

who stops them.

Company policy should advise employees of the penalties for those who

consistently fail to wear their badges; penalties might include sending the

employee home for the day without pay, or a notation in his personnel file. Some

companies institute a series of progressively more stringent penalties that may

include reporting the problem to the person's manager, then issuing a formal

warning.

In addition, where there is sensitive information to protect, the company should

establish procedures for authorizing people who need to visit during non-business

hours. One solution: require that arrangements be made through corporate

security or some other designated group. This group would routinely verify the

identity of any employee calling to arrange an off-hours visit by a call back to the

person's supervisor or some other reasonably secure method.

Treating Trash with Respect

The Dumpster-diving story dug into the potential misuses of your corporate trash.

The eight keys to wisdom regarding trash:

Classify all sensitive information based on the degree of sensitivity.

Establish company-wide procedures for discarding sensitive information.

Insist that all sensitive information to be discarded first be shredded, and provide

for a safe way for getting rid of important information on scraps of paper too

small for shredding. Shredders must not be the low-end budget type, which turn

out strips of paper that a determined attacker, given enough patience, can

reassemble. Instead, they need to be the kind called cross-shredders, or those that

render the output into useless pulp.

Provide a way for rendering unusable or completely erasing computer media--

floppy disks, Zip disks, CDs and DVDs used for storing files, removable tapes,

old hard drives, and other computer media--before they are discarded. Remember.that deleting files does not actually remove them; they can still be recovered--as

Enron executives and many others have learned to their dismay. Merely dropping

computer media in the trash is an invitation to your local friendly Dumpster

diver. (See Chapter 16 for specific guidelines on disposal of media and devices.)

Maintain an appropriate level of control over the selection of people on your

cleaning crews, using background checks if appropriate.

Remind employees periodically to think about the nature of the materials they are

tossing into the trash.

Lock trash Dumpsters.

Use separate disposal containers for sensitive materials, and contract to have the

materials disposed of by a bonded company that specializes in this work.

Saying Good-Bye to Employees

The point has been made earlier in these pages about the need for ironclad

procedures when a departing employee has had access to sensitive information,

passwords, dial-in numbers, and the like. Your security procedures need to

provide a way to keep track of who has authorization to various systems. It may

be tough to keep a determined social engineer from slipping past your security

barriers, but don't make it easy for an ex-employee.

Another step easily overlooked: When an employee who was authorized to

retrieve backup tapes from storage leaves, a written policy must call for the

storage company to be immediately notified to remove her name from its

authorization list.

Chapter 16 of this book provides .detailed information on this vital subject, but it

will be helpful to list here some of the key security provisions that should be in

place, as highlighted by this story:

A complete and thorough checklist of steps to be taken upon the departure of an

employee, with special provisions for workers who had access to sensitive data.

A policy of terminating the employee's computer access immediately--preferably

before the person has even left the building.

A procedure to recover the person's ID badge, as well as any keys or electronic

access devices..Provisions that require security guards to see photo ID before admitting any

employee who does not have his or her security pass, and for checking the name

against a list to verify that the person is still employed by the organization.

Some further steps will seem excessive or too expensive for some companies, but

they are appropriate to others. Among these more stringent security measures are:

Electronic ID badges combined with scanners at entrances; each employee

swipes his badge through the scanner for an instantaneous electronic

determination that the person is still a current employee and entitled to enter the

building. (Note, however, that security guards must still be trained to be on the

alert for piggybacking--an unauthorized person slipping by in the wake of a

legitimate employee.)

A requirement that all employees in the same workgroup as the person leaving

(especially if the person is being fired) change their passwords. (Does this seem

extreme? Many years after my short time working at General Telephone, I

learned that the Pacific Bell security people, when they heard General Telephone

had hired me, "rolled on the ground with laughter." But to General Telephone's

credit when they realized they had a reputed hacker working for them after they

laid me off, they then required that passwords be changed for everyone in the

company!)

You don't want your facilities to feel like jails, but at the same time you need to

defend against the guy who was fired yesterday but is back today intent on doing

damage.

Don't Forget Anybody

Security policies tend to overlook the entry-level worker, people like

receptionists who don't handle sensitive corporate information. We've seen

elsewhere that receptionists are a handy target for attackers, and the story of the

break-in at the auto parts company provides another example: A friendly person,

dressed like a professional, who claims to be a company employee from another

facility may not be what he appears. Receptionists need to be well-trained about

politely asking for company ID when appropriate, and the training needs to be

not just for the main receptionist but also for everyone who sits in as relief at the

reception desk during lunchtime or coffee breaks.

For visitors from outside the company, the policy should require that a photo ID

be shown and the information recorded. It isn't hard to get fake ID, but at least

demanding ID makes pre-texting one degree harder for the would-be attacker..In some companies, it makes sense to follow a policy requiring that visitors be

escorted from the lobby and from meeting to meeting. Procedures should require

that the escort make clear when delivering the visitor to his first appointment that

this person has entered the building as an employee , or non-employee. Why is

this important? Because, as we've seen in earlier

stories, an attacker will often pass himself off in one guise to the first person

encountered, and as someone else to the next. It's too easy for an attacker to show

up in the lobby, convince the receptionist that he has an appointment with, say, an

engineer.., then be escorted to the engineer's office where he claims to be a rep

from a company that wants to sell some product to the company.., and then, after

the meeting with the engineer, he has free access to roam the building.

Before admitting an off-site employee to the premises, suitable procedures must

be followed to verify that the person is truly an employee; receptionists and

guards must be aware of methods used by attackers to pretext the identity of an

employee in order to gain access to company buildings.

How about protecting against the attacker who cons his way inside the building

and manages to plug his laptop into a network port behind the corporate firewall?

Given today's technology, this is a challenge: conference rooms, training rooms,

and similar areas should not leave network ports unsecured but should protect

them with firewalls or routers. But better protection would come from the use of

a secure method to authenticate any users who connect to the network.

Secure IT!

A word to the wise: In your own company, every worker in IT probably knows or

can find out in moments how much you are earning, how much the CEO takes

home, and who's using the corporate jet to go on skiing vacations.

It's even possible in some companies for IT people or accounting people to

increase their own salaries, make payments to a phony vendor, remove negative

ratings from HR records, and so on. Sometimes it's only the fear of getting caught

that keeps them honest.., and then one day along comes somebody whose greed

or native dishonesty makes him (or her) ignore the risk and take whatever he

thinks he can get away with.

There are solutions, of course. Sensitive files can be protected by installing

proper access controls so that only authorized people can open them. Some

operating systems have audit controls that can be configured to maintain a log of

certain events, such as each person who attempts to access a protected file,

regardless of whether or not the attempt succeeds..If your company has understood this issue and has implemented proper access

controls and auditing that protects sensitive files--you're taking powerful steps in

the right direction..Chapter 11

Combining Technology and Social Engineering

A social engineer lives by his ability to manipulate people into doing things that

help him achieve his goal, but success often also requires a large measure of

knowledge and skill with computer systems and telephone systems.

Here's a sampling of typical social engineering scams where technology played

an important role.

HACKING BEHIND BARS

What are some of the most secure installations you can think of, protected against

break-in, whether physical, telecommunications, or electronic in nature? Fort

Knox? Sure. The White House? Absolutely. NORAD, the North American Air

Defense installation buried deep under a mountain? Most definitely.

How about federal prisons and detention centers? They must be about as secure

as any place in the country, right? People rarely escape, and when they do, they

are normally caught in short order. You would think that a federal facility would

be invulnerable to social engineering attacks. But you would be wrong--there is

no such thing as foolproof security, anywhere.

A few years ago, a pair of grifters (professional swindlers) ran into a problem. It

turned out they had lifted a large bundle of cash from a local judge. The pair had

been in trouble with the law on and off through the years, but this time the federal

authorities took an interest. They nabbed one of the grifters, Charles Gondorff,

and tossed him into a correctional center near San Diego. The federal magistrate

ordered him detained as flight risk and a danger to the community.

His pal Johnny Hooker knew that Charlie was going to need a defense attorney.

But where was the money going to come from? most grifters, their money had

always gone for good clothes, fancy cam and the ladies as fast as it came in.

Johnny larely had enough to live on.

The money for a good lawyer would have to come from running another scam.

Johnny wasn't up to doing this on this own. Charlie Gondorff had always been

the brains behind their cons. But Johnny didn't dare visit the detention center to

ask Charlie what to do, not when the Feds knew there had been two men involved

in the scam and were so eager to lay their hands on the other one. Especially

since only family can visit. which meant he'd have to show fake identification

and claim to be a family member. Trying to use fake ID in a federal prison didn't

sound like a smart idea..No, he'd have to get in touch with Gondorff some other way.

It wouldn't be easy. No inmate in any federal, state, or local facility is allowed to

receive phone calls. A sign posted by every inmate telephone in a federal

detention center says something like, "This notice is to advise the user that all

conversations from this telephone are subject to monitoring. and the use of the

telephone constitutes consent to the monitoring. Having government officials

listen in on your phone calls while committing

a crime has a way of extending your federally funded vacation plans.

Johnny knew, though, that certain phone calls were not monitored: calls

between a prisoner and his attorney, protected by the Constitution as client-attorney

communications, for example. In fact, the facility where Gondorff

was being held had telephones connected directly to the federal Public

Defender's Office. Pick up one of those phones, and a direct connection

is made to the corresponding telephone in the PDO. The phone company calls

this service Direct Connect. The unsuspecting authorities assume the service is

secure and invulnerable to tampering because outgoing

calls can only go to the PDO, and incoming calls are blocked. Even if someone

were somehow able to find out the phone number, the phones are programmed

in the telephone company switch as deny terminate, which is a clumsy

phone company term for service where incoming calls are not permitted.

Since any halfway decent grifter is well versed in the art of deception, Johnny

figured there had to be a way around this problem. From the inside, Gondorff

had already tried picking up one of the PDO phones and saying, "This is Tom, at

the phone company repair center.

LINGO

DIRECT CONNECT Phone company term for a phone line that goes directly to

a specific number when picked up

DENY TERMINATE A phone company service option where switching

equipment is set that incoming calls cannot be received at a phone number

We're running a test on this line and I need you to try dialing nine, and then zero-zero."

The nine would have accessed an outside line, the zero-zero would then

have reached a long-distance operator. It didn't work the person answering the

phone at the PDO was already hip to that trick.

Johnny was having better success. He readily found out that there were ten

housing units in the detention center, each with a direct connect telephone line to

the Public Defender's Office. Johnny encountered some obstacles, but like a

social engineer, he was able to think his way around these annoying stumbling.blocks. Which unit was Gondorff in? What was the telephone number to the

direct connect services in that housing unit? And how would he initially get a

message to Gondorff without it being intercepted by prison officials?

What may appear to be the impossible to average folks, like obtaining the secret

telephone numbers located in federal institutions, is very often no more than a

few phone calls away for a con artist. After a couple of tossing-and-turning nights

brainstorming a plan, Johnny woke up one mormng with the whole thing laid out

in his mind, in five steps.

First, he'd find out the phone numbers for those ten direct-connect telephones to

the PDO.

He'd have all ten changed so that the phones would allow incoming calls.

He'd find out which housing unit Gondorff was on.

Then he'd find out which phone number went to that unit.

Finally, he'd arrange with Gondorff when to expect his call, without the

government suspecting a thing.

Piece a' cake, he thought.

Calling Ma Bell...

Johnny began by calling the phone company business office under the pretext of

being from the General Services Administration, the agenc responsible for

purchasing goods and services for the federal government.

He said he was working on an acquisition order for additional services and

needed to know the billing information for any direct connect services currently

in use, including the working telephone numbers and monthly cost at the San

Diego detention center. The lady was happy to help.

Just to make sure, he tried dialing into one of those lines and was answered by the

typical audichron recording, "This line has been disconnected or is no longer in

service"-which he knew meant nothing of kind but instead meant that the line

was programmed to block incoming calls, just as he expected.

He knew from his extensive knowledge of phone company operations and

procedures that he'd need to reach a department called the Recent Change

Memory Authorization Center or RCMAC (I will always wonder who

makes up these names!). He began by calling the phone company Business

Office, said he was in Repair and needed to know the number for the RCMAC.that handled the service area for the area code and prefix he gave, which was

served out of the same central office for all the to telephone lines in the detention

center. It was a routine request, the kind provided for technicians out in the field

in need of some assistance, and the clerk had no hesitation in giving him the

number.

He called RCMAC, gave a phony name and again said he was in Repair

He had the lady who answered access one of the telephone numbers he had

conned out of the business office a few calls earlier; when she had it up, Johnny

asked, "Is the number set to deny termination?

"Yes," she said.

"Well, that explains why the customer isn't able to receive calls!" Johnny said.

"Listen, can you do me a favor. I need you to change the line class code or

remove the deny terminate feature, okay?" There was a pause as she checked

another computer system to verify that a service order had been placed to

authorize the change. She said, "That number is supposed to be restricted for

outgoing calls only. There's no service order for a change."

"Right, it's a mistake. We were supposed to process the order yesterday but the

regular account rep that handles this customer went home sick and forgot to have

someone else take care of the order for her. So now of course the customer is up

in arms about it."

After a momentary pause while the lady pondered this request, which would be

out of the ordinary and against standard operating procedures, she said, "Okay."

He could hear her typing, entering the change. And a few seconds later, it was

done.

The ice had been broken, a kind of collusion established between them. Reading

the woman's attitude and willingness to help, Johnny didn't hesitate to go for it

all. He said, "Do you have a few minutes more to help me?"

"Yeah," she answered. "What do you need?"

"I've got a several other lines that belong to the same customer, and all have the

same problem. I'll read off the numbers, so you can make sure that they're not set

for deny terminate--okay?" She said that was fine.

A few minutes later, all ten phone lines had been "fixed" to accept incoming

calls..Finding Gondorff

Next, find out what housing unit Gondorff was on. This is information that the

people who run detention centers and prisons definitely don't want outsiders to

know. Once again Johnny had to rely on his social engineering skills.

He placed a call to a federal prison in another city--he called Miami,

but any one would have worked--and claimed he was calling from the detention

center in New York. He asked to talk to somebody who worked with the Bureau's

Sentry computer, the computer system that contains information on every

prisoner being held in a Bureau of Prisons facility anywhere in the country.

When that person came on the phone, Johnny put on his Brooklyn accent. "Hi,"

he said. "This is Thomas at the FDC New York. Our connection to Sentry keeps

going down, can you find the location of a prisoner for me, I think this prisoner

may be at your institution," and gave Gondorff's name and his registration

number.

"No, he's not here," the guy said after a couple of moments. "He's at the

correctional center in San Diego."

Johnny pretended to be surprised. "San Diego! He was supposed to be transferred

to Miami on the Marshal's airlift last week! Are we talking about the same guy--

what's the guy's DOB?"

12/3/60," the man read from his screen.

"Yeah, that's the same guy. What housing unit is he on?"

"He's on Ten North," the man said--blithely answering the question

even though there isn't any conceivable reason why a prison employee in

New York would need to know this.

Johnny now had the phones turned on for incoming calls, and knew which

housing unit Gondorff was on. Next, find out which phone number connected to

unit Ten North.

This one was a bit difficult. Johnny called one of the numbers. He knew the

ringer of the phone would be turned off; no one would know it was ringing. So he

sat there reading Fodor's Europe} Great Cities travel guide. while listening to the

constant ringing on speakerphone until finally somebody picked up. The inmate

on the other end would, of course, be trying to reach his court-appointed lawyer.

Johnny was prepared with the expected response. "Public Defender's Office," he

announced..When the man asked for his attorney, Johnny said, "I'll see if he's available, what

housing unit are you calling from?" He jotted down the man's answer, clicked

onto hold, came back after half a minute and said, "He's in court, you'll have to

call back later," and hung up.

He had spent the better part of a morning, but it could have been worse; his fourth

attempt turned out to be from Ten North. So Johnny now knew the phone number

to the PDO phone on Gondorff's housing unit.

Synchronize Your Watches

Now to get a message through to Gondorff on when to pick up the telephone line

that connects inmates directly to the Public Defender's Office. ]'his was easier

than it might sound.

Johnny called the detention center using his official-sounding voice, identified

himself as an employee, and asked to be transferred to Ten North. The call was

put right through. When the correctional officer there picked up, Johnny conned

him by using the insider's abbreviation for Receiving and Discharge, the unit that

processes new inmates in, and departing ones out: "This is Tyson in R&D," he

said. "I need to speak to inmate Gondorff. We have some property of his we have

to ship and we need an address where he wants it sent. Could you call him to the

phone for me?"

Johnny could hear the guard shouting across the day room. After an impatient

several minutes, a familiar voice came on the line.

Johnny told him, "Don't say anything until I explain what this is." He explained

the pretext so Johnny could sound like he was discussing where his property

should be shipped. Johnny then said, "If you can get to the Public Defender

phone at one this afternoon, don't respond. If you can't, then say a time that you

can be there." Gondorff didn't reply. Johnny went on, "Good. Be there at one

o'clock. I'll call you then. Pick up the phone.

If it starts to ring to the Public Defenders Office, flash the switch hook every

twenty seconds. Keep trying till you hear me on the other end."

At one o'clock, Gondorff picked up the phone, and Johnny was there waiting for

him. They had a chatty, enjoyable, unhurried conversation, leading to a series of

similar calls to plan the scam that would raise the money to pay Gondorff's legal

fees--all free from government surveillance.

Analyzing the Con

This episode offers a prime example of how a social engineer can make the

seemingly impossible happen by conning several people, each one doing.something that, by itself, seems inconsequential. In reality, each action provides

one small piece of the puzzle until the con is complete.

The first phone company employee thought she was giving information to

someone from the federal government's General Accounting Office.

The next phone company employee knew she wasn't supposed to change the class

of telephone service without a service order, but helped out the friendly man

anyway. This made it possible to place calls through to all ten of the public

defender phone lines in the detention center.

For the man at the detention center in Miami, the request to help someone at

another federal facility with a computer problem seemed perfectly reasonable.

And even though there didn't seem any reason he would want to know the

housing unit, why not answer the question?

And the guard on Ten North who believed that the caller was really from within

the same facility, calling on official business? It was a perfectly reasonable

request, so he called the inmate Gondorff to the telephone. No big deal.

A series of well-planned stories that added up to completing the sting.

THE SPEEDY DOWNLOAD

Ten years after they had finished law school, Ned Racine saw his classmates

living in nice homes with front lawns, belonging to country clubs, playing golf

once or twice a week, while he was still handling penny-ante cases for the kind of

people who never had enough money to pay his bill. Jealousy can be a nasty

companion. Finally one day, Ned had had enough.

The one good client he ever had was a small but very successful accounting firm

that specialized in mergers and acquisitions. They hadn't used Ned for long, just

long enough for him to realize they were involved in deals that, once they hit the

newspapers, would affect the stock price of one or two publicly traded

companies. Penny-ante, bulletin-board stocks, but in some ways that was even

better--a small jump in price could represent a big percentage gain on an

investment. If he could only tap into their files and find out what they were

working on...

He knew a man who knew a man who was wise about things not exactly in the

mainstream. The man listened to the plan, got fired up and agreed to help. For a

smaller fee than he usually charged, against a percentage of Ned's stock market.killing, the man gave Ned instructions on what to do. He also gave him a handy

little device to use, something brand-new on the market.

For a few days in a row Ned kept watch on the parking lot of the small business

park where the accounting company had its unpretentious, storefront-like offices.

Most people left between 5:30 and 6. By 7, the lot was empty. The cleaning crew

showed up around 7:30. Perfect.

The next night at a few minutes before 8 o'clock, Ned parked across the street

from the parking lot. As he expected, the lot was empty except for the truck from

the janitorial services company. Ned put his ear to the door and heard the vacuum

cleaner running. He knocked at the door very loudly, and stood there waiting in

his suit and tie, holding his well-worn briefcase. No answer, but he was patient.

He knocked again. A man from the cleaning crew finally appeared. "Hi," Ned

shouted through the glass door, showing the business card of one of the partners

that he had picked up some time earlier. "I locked my keys in my car and I need

to get to my desk."

The man unlocked the door, locked it again behind Ned, and then went down the

corridor turning on lights so Ned could see where he was going. And why not--he

was being kind to one of the people who helped put food on his table. Or so he

had every reason to think.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Industrial spies and computer intruders will sometimes make a physical entry into

the targeted business. Rather than using a crowbar to break in, the social engineer

uses the art of deception to influence the person on the other side of the door to

open up for him.

Ned sat down at the computer of one of the partners, and turned it on. While it

was starting up, he installed the small device he had been given into the USB port

of the computer, a gadget small enough to carry on a key ring, yet able to hold

more than 120 megabytes of data. He logged into the network with the username

and password of the partner's secretary, which were conveniently written down

on a Post-it note stuck to the display. In less than five minutes, Ned had

downloaded every spreadsheet and document file stored on the workstation and

from the partner's network directory and was on his way home.

EASY MONEY

When I was first introduced to computers in high school, we had to connect over

a modem to one central DEC PDP 11 minicomputer in downtown Los Angeles.that all the high schools in L.A. shared. The operating system on that computer

was called RSTS/E, and it was the operating system I first learned to work with.

At that time, in 1981, DEC sponsored an annual conference for its product users,

and one year I read that the conference was going to be held in L.A. A popular

magazine for users of this operating system carried an announcement about a new

security product, LOCK-11. The product was being promoted with a clever ad

campaign that said something like, "It's 3:30 ,.M. and Johnny down the street

found your dial-in number, 555-0336, on his 336th try. He's in and you're out.

Get LOCK-11." The product, the ad suggested, was hacker-proof. And it was

going to be on display at the conference.

I was eager to see the product for myself. A high school buddy and friend, Vinny,

my hacking partner for several years who later became a federal informant

against me, shared my interest in the new DEC product, and encouraged me to go

to the conference with him.

Cash on the Line

We arrived to find a big buzz already going around the crowd at the trade show

about LOCK-11. It seemed that the developers were staking cash on the line in a

bet that no one could break into their product. Sounded like a challenge I could

not resist.

We headed straight for the LOCK-11 booth and found it manned by three guys

who were the developers of the product; I recognized them and they recognized

me--even as a teen, I already had a reputation as a phreaker and hacker because

of a big story the LA Times had run about my first juvenile brush with the

authorities. The article reported that I had talked my way into a Pacific Telephone

building in the middle of the night and walked out with computer manuals, right

under the nose of their security guard. (It appears the Times wanted to run a

sensationalist story and it served their purposes to publish my name; because I

was still a juvenile, the article violated the custom if not the law of withholding

the names of minors accused of wrongdoing.)

When Vinny and I walked up, ir created some interest on both sides. There was

an interest on their side because they recognized me as the hacker they had read

about and they were a bit shocked to see me. It created an interest on our side

because each of the three developers was standing there with a $100 bill sticking

out of his tradeshow badge. The prize money for anybody who could defeat their

system would be the whole $300--which sounded like a lot of money to a pair of

teenagers. We could hardly wait to get started..LOCK-11 was designed on an established principle that relied on two levels of

security. A user had to have a valid ID and password, as usual, but in addition

that ID and password would only work when entered from authorized terminals,

an approach called terminal-based security. To defeat the system, a hacker would

need not only to have knowledge of an account ID and password, but would also

have to enter that information from the correct terminal. The method was well

established, and the inventors of LOCK-11 were convinced it would keep the bad

guys out. We decided we were going to teach them a lesson, and earn three

hundred bucks to boot.

A guy I knew who was considered an RSTS/E guru had already beaten us to the

booth. Years before he had been one of the guys who had challenged me to break

into the DEC internal development computer, after which his associates had

turned me in. Since those days he had become a respected programmer. We

found out that he had tried to defeat the LOCK-11 security program not long

before we arrived, but had been unable to. The incident had given the developers

greater confidence that their product really was secure.

LINGO

TERMINAL-BASED SECURITY Security based in part on the identification

of the particular computer terminal being used; this method of security was

especially popular with IBM mainframe computers.

The contest was a straightforward challenge: You break in, you win the bucks. A

good publicity stunt.., unless somebody was able to embarrass them and take the

money. They were so sure of their product that they were even audacious enough

to have a printout posted at the booth giving the account numbers and

corresponding passwords to some accounts on the system. And not just regular

user accounts, but all the privileged accounts.

That was actually less daring than it sounds: In this type of set-up, I knew, each

terminal is plugged into a port on the computer itself. It wasn't rocket science to

figure out they had set up the five terminals in the conference hall so a visitor

could log in only as a non-privileged user--that is, logins were possible only to

accounts without system administrator privileges. It looked as if there were only

two routes: either bypass the security software altogether--exactly what the

LOCK-11 was designed to prevent; or somehow get around the software in a way

that the developers hadn't imagined.

Taking Up the Challenge

Vinny and I walked away and talked about the challenge, and I came up with a

plan. We wandered around innocently, keeping an eye on the booth from a

distance. At lunchtime, when the crowd thinned out, the three developers took.advantage of the break and took off together to get something to eat, leaving

behind a woman who might have been the wife or girlfriend of one of them. We

sauntered back over and I distracted the woman, chatting her up about this and

that, "How long have you been with the company? "What other products does

your company have on the market?" and so on.

Meanwhile Vinny, out of her sight line, had gone to work, making use of a skill

he and I had both developed. Besides the fascination of breaking into computers,

and my own interest in magic, we had both been intrigued by learning how to

open locks. As a young kid, I had scoured the shelves of an underground

bookstore in the San Fernando Valley that had volumes on picking locks, getting

out of handcuffs, creating fake identities--all kinds of things a kid was not

supposed to know about.

Vinny, like me, had practiced lock-picking until we were pretty good with any

run-of-the-mill hardware-store lock. There had been a time when I got a kick out

of pranks involving locks, like spotting somebody who was using two locks for

extra protection, picking the locks, and put-ring them back in the opposite places,

which would baffle and frustrate the owner when he tried to open each with the

wrong key.

In the exhibit hall, I continued to keep the young woman distracted while Vinny,

squatting down at the back of the booth so he couldn't beseen, picked the lock on

the cabinet that housed their PDP-11 minicomputer and the cable terminations.

To call the cabinet locked was almost a joke. It was secured with what locksmiths

refer to as a wafer lock, notoriously easy to pick, even for fairly clumsy, amateur

lock-pickers like us.

It took Vinny all of about a minute to open the lock. Inside the cabinet he found

just what we had anticipated: the strip of ports for plugging in user terminals, and

one port for what's called the console terminal. This was the terminal used by the

computer operator or system administrator to control all the computers. Vinny

plugged the cable leading from the console port into one of the terminals on the

show floor.

That meant this one terminal was now recognized as a console terminal. I sat

down at the recabled machine and logged in using a password the developers had

so audaciously provided. Because the LOCK-11 software now identified that I

was logging in from an authorized terminal, it granted me access, and I was

connected with system administrator privileges. I patched the operating system

by changing it so that from any of the terminals on the floor, I would be able to

log in as a privileged user..Once my secret patch was installed, Vinny went back to work disconnecting the

terminal cable plugging it back in where it had been originally. Then he picked

the lock once again, this time to fasten the cabinet door closed.

I did a directory listing to find out what files were on the computer, looking for

the LocK-11 program and associated files and stumbled on something I found

shocking: a directory that should not have been on this machine. The developers

had been so overconfident, so certain their software was invincible, that they

hadn't bothered to remove the source code of their new product. Moving to the

adjacent hard-copy terminal, I started printing out portions of the source code

onto the continuous sheets of the green-striped computer paper used in those

days.

Vinny had only just barely finished picking the lock closed and rejoined me when

the guys returned from lunch. They found me sitting at the computer pounding

the keys while the printer continued to churn away. "What'cha doing, Kevin?"

one of them asked.

"Oh, just printing out your source code," I said. They assumed I was joking, of

course. Until they looked at the printer and saw that it really u, as the jealously

guarded source code for their product.

They didn't believe it was possible that I was logged in as a privileged user.

"Type a Control-T," one of the developers commanded. I did. The display that

appeared on the screen confirmed my claim. The guy smacked his forehead, as

Vinny said, "Three hundred dollars, please."

MITNICK MESSAGE

Here's another example of smart people underestimating the enemy. How about

you--are you so certain about your company's security safeguards that you would

bet $300 against an attacker breaking in? Sometimes the way around a

technological security device is not the one you expect.

They paid up. Vinny and I walked around the tradeshow floor for the rest of the

day with the hundred-dollar bills stuck into our conference badges. Everyone

who saw the bills knew what they represented.

Of course, Vinny and I hadn't defeated their software, and if the developer team

had thought to set better rules for the contest, or had used a really secure lock, or

had watched their equipment more carefully, they wouldn't have suffered the

humiliation of that day--humiliation at the hands of a pair of teenagers..I found out later that the developer team had to stop by a bank to get some cash:

those hundred-dollar bills represented all the spending money they had brought

with them.

THE DICTIONARY AS AN ATTACK TOOL

When someone obtains your password, he's able to invade your system. In most

circumstances, you never even know that anything bad has happened.

A young attacker I'll call Ivan Peters had a target of retrieving the source code for

a new electronic game. He had no trouble getting into the company's wide area

network, because a hacker buddy of his had already compromised one of the

company's Web servers. After finding an un-patched vulnerability in the Web

server software, his buddy had just about fallen out of his chair when he realized

the system had been set up as a dual-homed host, which meant he had an entry

point into the internal network. .

But once Ivan was connected, he then faced a challenge that was like being inside

the Louvre and hoping to find the Mona Lisa. Without a floor plan, you could

wander for weeks. The company was global, with hundreds of offices and

thousands of computer servers, and they didn't exactly provide an index of

development systems or the services of a tour guide to steer him to the right one.

Instead of using a technical approach to finding out what server he needed to

target, Ivan used a social engineering approach. He placed phone calls based on

methods similar to those described elsewhere in this book. First, calling IT

technical support, he claimed to be a company employee having an interface

issue on a product his group was designing. and asked for the phone number of

the project leader for the gaming development team.

Then he called the name he'd been given, posing as a guy from IT. "Later

tonight," he said, "we're swapping out a router and need to make sure the people

on your team don't lose connectivity to your server. So we need to know which

servers your team uses." The network was being upgraded all the time. And

giving the name of the server wouldn't hurt anything anyway, now would it?

Since it was password-protected, just having the name couldn't help anybody

break in. So the guy gave the attacker the server name. Didn't even bother to call

the man back to verify his story, or write down his name and phone number. He

just gave the name of the servers, ATM5 and ATM6.

The Password Attack

At this point, Ivan switched to a technical approach to get the authentication

information. The first step with most technical attacks on systems that provide.remote access capability is to identify an account with a weak password, which

provides an initial entry point into the system.

When an attacker attempts to use hacking tools for remotely identifying

passwords, the effort may require him to stay connected to the company's

network for hours at a time. Clearly he does this at his peril: The longer he stays

connected, the greater the risk of detection and getting caught.

As a preliminary step, Ivan would do an enumeration, which reveals details about

a target system. Once again the Internet conveniently provides software for the

purpose (at http://ntsleuth.0catch.com; the character before "catch" is a zero).

Ivan found several publicly available hacking tools on the Web that automated

the enumeration process, avoiding the need to do it by hand, which would take

longer and thus run a higher risk. Knowing that the organization mostly deployed

Windows-based servers, he downloaded a copy of NBTEnum, a NetBIOS (basic

input/output system) enumeration utility. He entered the IP (Internet protocol)

address of the ATM5 server, and started running the program. The enumeration

tool was able to identify several accounts that existed on the server.

LINGO

ENUMERATION A process that reveals the service enabled on the target

system, the operating system platform, and a list of accounts names of the users

who have access to the system.

Once the existing accounts had been identified, the same enumeration tool had

the ability to launch a dictionary attack against the computer system. A dictionary

attack is something that many computer security folks and intruders are

intimately familiar with, but that most other people will probably be shocked to

learn is possible. Such an attack is aimed at uncovering the password of each user

on the system by using commonly used words.

We're all lazy about some things, but it never ceases to amaze me that when

people choose their passwords, their creativity and imagination seem to

disappear. Most of us want a password that gives us protection but that is at the

same time easy to remember, which usually means something closely connected

to us. Our initials, middle name, nickname, spouse's name, favorite song, movie,

or brew, for example. The name of the street we live on or the town we live in,

the kind of car we drive, the beachfront village we like to stay at in Hawaii, or

that favorite stream with the best trout fishing around. Recognize the pattern

here? These are mostly personal names, place names, or dictionary words. A

dictionary attack runs through common words at a very rapid pace, trying each as

a password on one or more user accounts..Ivan ran the dictionary attack in three phases. For the first, he used a simple list

of some 800 of the most common passwords; the list includes secret, work, and

password. Also the program permutated the dictionary words to try each word

with an appended digit, or appending the number of the current month. The

program tried each attempt against all of the user accounts that had been

identified. No luck.

For the next attempt, Ivan went to Google's search engine and typed, "wordlists

dictionaries," and found thousands of sites with extensive wordlists and

dictionaries for English and several foreign languages. He downloaded an entire

electronic English dictionary. He then enhanced this by downloading a number of

word lists that he found with Google. Ivan chose the site at

www.outpost9.com/files/WordLists.html.

This site allowed him to download (all of this for free) a selection of files

including family names, given namek, congressional names and words, actor's

names, and words and names from the Bible.

Another of the many sites offering word lists is actually provided through Oxford

University, at ftp://ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/wordlists.

Other sites offer lists with the names of cartoon characters, words used in

Shakespeare, in the Odyssey, Tolkien, and the Star Trek series, as well as in

science and religion, and on and on. (One on-line company sells a list containing

4.4 million words and names for only $20.) The attack program can be set to test

the anagrams of the dictionary words, as well-- another favorite method that

many computer users think increases their safety.

Faster Than You Think

Once Ivan had decided which wordlist to use, and started the attack, the software

ran on autopilot. He was able to turn his attention to other things. And here's the

incredible part: You would think such an attack would allow the hacker to take a

Rip van Winkle snooze and the software would still have made little progress

when he awoke. In fact, depending on the platform being attacked, the security

configuration of the system, and network connectivity, every word in an English

dictionary can, incredibly, be attempted in less than thirty minutes!

While this attack was running, Ivan started another computer running a similar

attack on the other server used by the development group, ATM6. Twenty

minutes later, the attack software had done what most unsuspecting users like to

think is impossible: It had broken a password, revealing that one of the users had

chosen the password "Frodo," one of the Hobbits in the book The Lord of the

Rings..With this password in hand, Ivan was able to connect to the ATM6 server using

the user's account.

There was good news and bad news for our attacker. The good news was that the

account he cracked had administrator privileges, which would be essential for the

next step. The bad news was that the source code for the game was not anywhere

to be found. It must be, after all, on the other machine, the ATM5, which he

already knew was resistant to a dictionary attack. But Ivan wasn't giving up just

yet; he still had a few more tricks to try.

On some Windows and UNIX operating systems, password hashes (encrypted

passwords) are openly available to anyone who has access to the computer they're

stored on. The reasoning is that the encrypted passwords cannot be broken and

therefore do not need to be protected. The theory is wrong. Using another tool

called pwdump3, also available on the Internet, he was able to extract the

password hashes from the ATM6 machine and download them.

A typical file of password hashes looks like this:

Administrator:

500:95E4321A38AD8D6AB75EOC8D76954A50:2E48927AO

BO4F3BFB341E26F6D6E9A97 : : :

akasper :

1110:5A8D7E9E3C3954F642C5C736306CBFEF:393CE7F90A8357

F157873D72D0490821: : :

digger: 1111:5D15COD58DD216C525AD3B83FA6627C7 :

17AD564144308B4 2B8403DOIAE256558: : :

ellgan :

1112:2017D4A5D8D1383EFF17365FAFIFFE89:O7AEC950C22CBB9

C2C734EB89320DB13: : :

tabeck: 1115:9F5890B3FECCAB7EAAD3B435B51404EE:

1FO115A72844721 2FCO5EID2D820B35B: : :

vkantar :

1116:81A6A5DO35596E7DAAD3B435B51404EE:B933D36DD12258

946FCC7BD153F1CD6E : : :.vwallwick: 1119 : 25904EC665BA30F4449AF42E1054F192:15B2B7953FB6

32907455D2706A432469 : : :

mmcdonald: 1121:A4AEDO98D29A3217AAD3B435B51404EE:

E40670F936B7 9C2ED522F5ECA9398A27 : : :

kworkman : 1141:C5C598AF45768635AAD3B435B51404EE:

DEC8E827A1212 73EFO84CDBF5FD1925C : : :

With the hashes now downloaded to his computer, Ivan used another tool that

performed a different flavor of password attack known as brute force. This kind

of attack tries every combination of alphanumeric characters and most special

symbols.

Ivan used a software utility called L0phtcrack3 (pronounced loft-crack; available

at www.atstake.com; another source for some excellent password recovery tools

is www.elcomsoft.com). System administrators use L0pht-crack3 to audit weak

passwords; attackers use it to crack passwords. The brute force feature in LC3

tries passwords with combinations of letters, numerals, and most symbols

including !@#$%^&. It systematically tries every possible combination of most

characters. (Note, however, that if nonprintable characters are used, LC3 will be

unable to discover the password )

The program has a nearly unbelievable speed, which can reach to as high as 2.8

million attempts a second on a machine with a 1 GHz processor. Even with this

speed, and if the system administrator has configured the Windows operating

system properly (disabling the use of LANMAN hashes), breaking a password

can still take an excessive amount of time.

LINGO

BRUTE FORCE ATTACK A password detection stategy that tries every

possible combination of alphanumeric characters and special symbols.

For that reason the attacker often downloads the hashes and runs the attack on his

or another machine, rather than staying on line on the target company's network

and risking detection.

For Ivan, the wait was not that long. Several hours later the program presented

him with passwords for every one of the development team members. But these

were the passwords for users on the ATM6 machine, and he already knew the

game source code he was after was not on this server.

What now? He still had not been able to get a password for an account on the

ATM5 machine. Using his hacker mindset, understanding the poor security habits.of typical users, he figured one of the team members might have chosen the same

password for both machines.

In fact, that's exactly what he found. One of the team members was using the

password "garners" on both ATM5 and ATM6.

The door had swung wide open for Ivan to hunt around until he found the

programs he was after. Once he located the source-code tree and gleefully

downloaded it, he took one further step typical of system crackers: He changed

the password of a dormant account that had administrator rights, just in case he

wanted to get an updated version of the software at some time in the future.

Analyzing the Con

In this attack that called on both technical and people-based vulnerabilities, the

attacker began with a pretext telephone call to obtain the location and host names

of the development servers that held the proprietary information.

He then used a software utility to identify valid account-user names for everyone

who had an account on the development server. Next he ran two successive

password attacks, including a dictionary attack, which searches for commonly

used passwords by trying all of the words in an English dictionary, sometimes

augmented by several word lists containing names, places, and items of special

interest.

Because both commercial and public-domain hacking tools can be obtained by

anyone for whatever purpose they have in mind, it's all the more important that

you be vigilant in protecting enterprise computer systems and your network

infrastructure.

The magnitude of this threat cannot be overestimated. According to Computer

World magazine, an analysis at New York-based Oppenheimer Funds led to a

startling discovery. The firm's Vice President of Network Security and Disaster

Recovery ran a password attack against the employees of his firm using one of

the standard software packages. The magazine reported that within three minutes

he managed to crack the passwords of 800 employees.

MITNICK MESSAGE

In the terminology of the game Monopoly, if you use a dictionary word for your

password--Go directly to Jail. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. You have to

teach your employees how to choose passwords that truly protect your assets..PREVENTING THE CON

Social engineering attacks may become even more destructive when the attacker

adds a technology element. Preventing this kind of attack typically involves

taking steps on both human and technical levels.

Just Say No

In the first story of the chapter, the telephone company RCMAC clerk should not

have removed the deny terminate status from the ten phone lines when no service

order existed authorizing the change. It's not enough for employees to know the

security policies and procedures; employees must understand how important

these policies are to the company in preventing damage.

Security policies should discourage deviation from procedure through a system of

rewards and consequences. Naturally, the policies must be realistic, not calling on

employees to carry out steps so burdensome that they are likely to be ignored.

Also, a security awareness program needs to convince employees that, while it's

important to complete job assignments in a timely manner, taking a shortcut that

circumvents proper security procedures can be detrimental to the company and co

workers.

The same caution should be present when providing information to a stranger on

the telephone. No matter how persuasively the person presents himself,

regardless of the person's status or seniority in the company, absolutely no

information should be provided that is not designated as publicly available until

the caller's identity has been positively verified. If this policy had been strictly

observed, the social engineering scheme in this story would have failed and

federal detainee Gondorff would never have been able to plan a new scare with

his pal Johnny.

This one point is so important that I reiterate it throughout this book: Verify,

verify, verify. Any request not made in person should never be accepted without

verifying the requestor's identity--period.

Cleaning Up

For any company that does not have security guards around the clock, the scheme

wherein an attacker gains access to an office after hours presents a challenge.

Cleaning people will ordinarily treat with respect anyone who appears to be with

the company and appears legitimate. After all, this is someone who could get

them in trouble or fired. For that reason, cleaning crews, whether internal or

contracted from an outside agency, must be trained on physical security matters.

Janitorial work doesn't exactly require a college education, or even the ability to

speak English, and the usual training, if any, involves non-security related issues.such as which kind of cleaning product to use for different tasks. Generally these

people don't get an instruction like, "If someone asks you to let them in after

hours, you need to see their company ID card, and then call the cleaning

company office, explain the situation, and wait for authorization."

An organization needs to plan for a situation like the one in this chapter before it

happens and train people accordingly. In my personal experience, I have found

that most, if not all, private sector businesses are very lax in this area of physical

security. You might try to approach the problem from the other end, putting the

burden on your company's own employees. A company without 24-hour guard

service should tell its employees that to get in after hours, they are to bring their

own keys or electronic access cards, and must never put the cleaning people in

the position of deciding who it is okay to admit. Then tell the janitorial company

that their people must always be trained that no one is to be admitted to your

premises by them at any time. This is a simple rule: Do not open the door for

anyone. If appropriate, this could be put into writing as a condition of the contract

with the cleaning company.

Also, cleaning crews should be trained about piggybacking techniques

(unauthorized persons following an authorized person into a secure entrance).

They should also be trained not to allow another person to follow them into the

building just because the person looks like they might be an employee.

Follow up every now and then--say, three or four times a year--by staging a

penetration test or vulnerability assessment. Have someone show up at the door

when the cleaning crew is at work and try to talk her way into the building.

Rather than using your own employees, you can hire a firm that specializes in this

kind of penetration testing.

Pass It On: Protect Your Passwords

More and more, organizations are becoming increasingly vigilant about enforcing

security policies through technical means--for example, configuring the operating

system to enforce password policies and limit the number of invalid login

attempts that can be made before locking out the account. In fact, Microsoft

Windows business platforms generally have this feature built in. Still,

recognizing how easily annoyed customers are by features that require extra

effort, the products are usually delivered with security features turned off. It's

really about time that software manufacturers stop delivering products with

security features disabled by default when it should be the other way around. (I

suspect they'll figure this out soon enough.)

Of course, corporate security policy should mandate system administrators to

enforce security policy through technical means whenever possible, with the goal.of not relying on fallible humans any more than necessary. It's a no-brainer that

when you limit the number of successive invalid login attempts to a particular

account, for example, you make an attacker's life significantly more difficult.

Every organization faces that uneasy balance between strong security and

employee productivity, which leads some employees to ignore security policies,

not accepting how essential these safeguards are for protecting the integrity of

sensitive corporate information.

If a company's policies leave some issues un-addressed, employees may use the

path of least resistance and do whatever action is most convenient and makes

their job easier. Some employees may resist change and openly disregard good

security habits. You may have encountered such an employee, who follows

enforced rules about password length and complexity but then writes the

password on a Post-it note and defiantly sticks it to his monitor.

A vital part of protecting your organization is the use of hard-to-discover

passwords, combined with strong security settings in your technology.

For a detailed discussion of recommended password policies, see Chapter 16..Chapter 12

Attacks on the Entry-Level Employee

As many of the stories here demonstrate, the skilled social engineer often targets

lower-level personnel in the organizational hierarchy. It can be easy to

manipulate these people into revealing seemingly innocuous information that the

attacker uses to advance one step closer to obtaining more sensitive company

information.

An attacker targets entry-level employees because they are typically unaware of

the value of specific company information or of the possible results of certain

actions. Also, they tend to be easily influenced by some of the more common

social engineering approaches--a caller who invokes authority; a person who

seems friendly and likeable; a person who appears to know people in the

company who are known to the victim; a request that the attacker claims is

urgent; or the inference that the victim will gain some kind of favor or

recognition.

Here are some illustrations of the attack on the lower-level employee in action.

THE HELPFUL SECURITY GUARD

Swindlers hope to find a person who's greedy because they are the ones most

likely to fall for a con game. Social engineers, when targeting someone such as a

member of a sanitation crew or a security guard, hope to find someone who is

good-natured, friendly, and trusting of others. They are the ones most likely to be

willing to help. That's just what the attacker had in mind in the following story.

Elliot's View

Date/time: 3:26 a.m. on a Tuesday morning in February 1998.

Location: Marchand Microsystems facility, Nashua, New Hampshire

Elliot Staley knew he wasn't supposed to leave his station when he wasn't on his

scheduled rounds. But it was the middle of the night, for crying out loud, and he

hadn't seen a single person since he had come on duty. And it was nearly time to

make his rounds anyway. The poor guy on the telephone sounded like he really

needed help. And it makes a person feel fine when they can do a little good for

somebody.

Bill's Story

Bill Goodrock had a simple goal, one he had held on to, unaltered, since age

twelve: to retire by age twenty-four, not ever touching a penny of his trust fund..To show his father, the almighty and unforgiving banker, that he could be a

success on his own.

Only two years left and it's by now perfectly clear he won't make his fortune in

the next twenty-four months by being a brilliant businessman and he won't do it

by being a sharp investor. He once wondered about robbing banks with a gun but

that's just the stuff of fiction--the risk-benefit

trade-off is so lousy. Instead he daydreams about doing a Rifkin--robbing a bank

electronically. The last time Bill was in Europe with the family, he opened a bank

account in Monaco with 100 Francs. It still has only 100 francs in it, but he has a

plan that could help it reach seven digits in a hurry. Maybe even eight if he's

lucky.

Bill's girlfriend Anne-marie worked in M&A for a large Boston bank. One day

while waiting at her offices until she got out of a late meeting, he gave in to

curiosity and plugged his laptop into an Ethernet port in the conference room he

was using. Yes!--he was on their internal network, connected inside the bank's

network.., behind the corporate firewall. That gave him an idea.

He pooled his talent with a classmate who knew a young woman named Julia, a

brilliant computer science Ph.D. candidate doing an internship at Marchand

Microsystems. Julia looked like a great source for essential insider information.

They told her they were writing a script for a movie and she actually believed

them. She thought it was fun making up a story with them and giving them all the

details about how you could actually bring off the caper they had described. She

thought the idea was brilliant, actually, and kept badgering them about giving her

a screen credit, too.

They warned her about how often screenplay ideas get stolen and made her swear

she'd never tell anyone.

Suitably coached by Julia, Bill did the risky part himself and never doubted he

could bring it off.

I called in the afternoon and managed to find out that the night supervisor of the

security force was a man named Isaiah Adams. At 9:30 that night I called the

building and talked to the guard on the lobby security desk. My story was all

based on urgency and I made myself sound a little panicky. "I'm having car

trouble and I can't get to the facility," I said. "I have this emergency and I really

need your help. I tried calling the guard supervisor, Isaiah, but he's not at home.

Can you just do me this onetime favor, I'd really appreciate it?".The rooms in that big facility were each labeled with a mail-stop code so I gave

him the mail-stop of the computer lab and asked him if he knew where that was.

He said yes, and agreed to go there for me. He said it would take him a few

minutes to get to the room, and I said I'd call him in the lab, giving the excuse

that I was using the only phone line available to me and I was using it to dial into

the network to try to fix the problem.

He was already there and waiting by the time I called, and I told him where to

find the console I was interested in, looking for one with a paper banner reading

"elmer"--the host that Julia had said was used to build the release versions of the

operating system that the company marketed. When he said he had found it, I

knew for sure that Julia had been feeding us good information and my heart

skipped a beat. I had him hit the Enter key a couple of times, and he said it

printed a pound sign. Which told me the computer was logged in as root, the

super-user account with all system privileges. He was a hunt-and-peck typist and

got all in a sweat when I tried to talk him through entering my next command,

which was more than a bit tricky:

echo 'fix:x:0:0::/:/bin/sh' >> /etc/passwd

Finally he got it right, and we had now provided an account with a name fix. And

then I had him type

echo 'fix: :10300:0:0' 55 /etc/shadow

This established the encrypted password, which goes between the double colon.

Putting nothing between those two colons meant the account would have a null

password. So just those two commands was all it took to append the account fix

to the password file, with a null password. Best of all, the account would have the

same privileges as a super-user.

The next thing I had him do was to enter a recursive directory command that

printed out a long list of file names. Then I had him feed the paper forward, tear it

off, and take it with him back to his guard desk because "I may need you to read

me something from it later on."

The beauty of this was that he had no idea he had created a new account. And I

had him print out the directory listing of filenames because I needed to make sure

the commands he typed earlier would leave the computer room with him. That

way the system administrator or operator wouldn't spot anything the next

morning that would alert them there had been a security breach..I was now set up with an account, a password, and full privileges. A little before

midnight I dialed in and followed the instructions Julia had carefully typed up

"for the screenplay." In a blink I had access to one of the development systems

that contained the master copy of the source code for the new version of the

company's operating system software.

I uploaded a patch that Julia had written, which she said modified a routine in one

of the operating system's libraries. That patch would, in effect, create a covert

backdoor that would allow remote access into the system with a secret password.

NOTE

The type of backdoor used here does not change the operating system login

program itself Rather, a specific function contained within the dynamic library

used by the login program is replaced to create the secret entry point. In typical

attacks, computer intruders often replace or patch the login program itself, but

sharp system administrators can detect the change by comparing it to the version

shipped on media such as cd , or by other distribution methods.

I carefully followed the instructions she had written down for me, first installing

the patch, then taking steps that removed the fix account and wiped clean all audit

logs so there would be no trace of my activities, effectively erasing my tracks.

Soon the company would begin shipping the new operating system upgrade to

their customers: Financial institutions all over the world. And every copy they

sent out would include the backdoor I had placed into the master distribution

before it was sent out, allowing me to access any computer system of every bank

and brokerage house that installed the upgrade.

LINGO

PATCH Traditionally a piece of code that , when placed in an executable

program, fixes a problem.

Of course, I wasn't quite home free--there would still be work to do. I'd still have

to gain access to the internal network of each financial institution I wanted to

"visit." Then I'd have to find out which of their computers was used for money

transfers, and install surveillance software to learn the details of their operations

and exactly how to transfer funds.

All of that I could do long distance. From a computer located anywhere. Say,

overlooking a sandy beach. Tahiti, here I come..I called the guard back, thanked him for his help, and told him he could go ahead

and toss the printout.

Analyzing the Con

The security guard had instructions about his duties, but even thorough, well-thought-

out instructions can't anticipate every possible situation. Nobody had told

him the harm that could be done by typing a few keystrokes on a computer for a

person he thought was a company employee.

With the cooperation of the guard, it was relatively easy to gain access to a

critical system that stored the distribution master, despite the fact that it was

behind the locked door of a secure laboratory. The guard, of course, had keys to

all locked doors.

Even a basically honest employee (or, in this case, the Ph.D. candidate and

company intern, Julia) can sometimes be bribed or deceived into revealing

information of crucial importance to a social engineering attack, such as where

the target computer system is located and--the key to the success of this attack---when

they were going to build the new release of the software for distribution.

That's important, since a change of this kind made too early has a higher chance

of being detected or being nullified if the operating system is rebuilt from a clean

source.

Did you catch the detail of having the guard take the printout back to the lobby

desk and later destroying it? This was an important step. When the computer

operators came to work the next workday, the attacker didn't want them to find

this damning evidence on the hard-copy terminal, or notice it in the trash. Giving

the guard a plausible excuse to take the printout with him avoided that risk.

MITNICK MESSAGE

When the computer intruder cannot gain physical access to a computer system or

network himself, he will try to manipulate another person to do it for him. In

cases where physical access is necessary for the plan, using the victim as a proxy

is even better than doing it himself, because the attacker assumes much less risk

of detection and apprehension.

THE EMERGENCY PATCH

You would think a tech support guy would understand the dangers of giving

access to the computer network to an outsider. But when that outsider is a clever

social engineer masquerading as a helpful software vendor, the results might not

be what you expect..A Helpful Call

The caller wanted to know Who's in charge of computers there? and the

telephone operator put him through to the tech support guy, Paul Ahearn.

The caller identified himself as "Edward, with SeerWare, your database vendor.

Apparently a bunch of our customers didn't get the email about our emergency

update, so we're calling a few for a quality control check to see whether there was

a problem installing the patch. Have you installed the update yet?"

Paul said he was pretty sure he hadn't seen anything like that.

Edward said, "Well, it could cause intermittent catastrophic loss of data, so we

recommend you get it installed as soon as possible." Yes, that was something he

certainly wanted to do, Paul said. "Okay," the caller responded. "We can send

you a tape or CD with the patch, and I want to tell you, it's really critical--two

companies already lost several days of data. So you really should get this

installed as soon as it arrives, before it happens to your company."

"Can't I download it from your Web site?" Paul wanted to know.

"It should be available soon--the tech team has been putting out all these fires. If

you want, we can have our customer support center install it for you, remotely.

We can either dial up or use Telnet to connect to the system, if you can support

that."

"We don't allow Telnet, especially from the Internet--it's not secure," Paul

answered. "If you can use SSH, that'd be okay," he said, naming a product that

provides secure file transfers.

"Yeah. We have SSH. So what's the IP address?"

Paul gave him the IP address, and when Andrew asked, "and what username and

password can I use," Paul gave him those, as well.

Analyzing the Con

Of course that phone call might really have come from the database

manufacturer. But then the story wouldn't belong in this book.

The social engineer here influenced the victim by creating a sense of fear that

critical data might be lost, and offered an immediate solution that would resolve

the problem.

Also, when a social engineer targets someone who knows the value of the

information, he needs to come up with very convincing and persuasive arguments

for giving remote access. Sometimes he needs to add the element of urgency so.the victim is distracted by the need to rush, and complies before he has had a

chance to give much thought to the request.

THE NEW GIRL

What kind of information in your company's files might an attacker want to gain

access to? Sometimes it can be something you didn't think you needed to protect

at all.

Sarah's Call

"Human Resources, this is Sarah."

"Hi, Sarah. This is George, in the parking garage. You know the access card

you use to get into the parking garage and elevators? Well, we had a problem and

we need to reprogram the cards for all the new hires from the last fifteen days."

"So you need their names?"

"And their phone numbers."

"I can check our new hire list and call you back. What's your phone number?"

"I'm at 73 . . . Uh, I'm going on .break, how about if I call you back in a half-hour?"

"Oh. Okay."

When he called back, she said:

"Oh, yes. Well, there's just two. Anna Myrtle, in Finance, she's a secretary. And

that new VP, Mr. Underwood."

"And the phone numbers?"

"Right Okay, Mr. Underwood is 6973. Anna Myrtle is 2127."

"Hey, you've been a big help. "thanks."

Anna's Call

"Finance, Anna speaking."

"I'm glad I found somebody working late. Listen, this is Ron Vittaro, I'm

publisher of the business division. I don't think we've been introduced. Welcome

to the company."

"Oh, thank you."."Anna, I'm in Los Angeles and I've got a crisis. I need to take about ten minutes

of your time."

"Of course. What do you need?"

"Go up to my office. Do you know where my office is?

"No."

"Okay, it's the corner office on the fifteenth floor-room 1502. I'll call you there

in a few minutes. When you get to the office, you'll need to press the forward

button on the phone so my call won't go directly to my voice mail."

"Okay, I'm on my way now."

Ten minutes later she was in his office, had cancelled his call forwarding and was

waiting when the phone rang. He told her to sit down at the computer and launch

Internet Explorer. When it was running he told her to type in an address:

www.oocities.org/ron-insen/manuscript.doc.exe.

A dialog box appeared, and he told her to click Open. The computer appeared to

start downloading the manuscript, and then the screen went blank. When she

reported that something seemed to be wrong, he replied, "Oh, no. Not again. I've

been having a problem with downloading from that Web site every so often but I

thought it was fixed. Well, okay, don't worry, I'll get the file another way later."

Then he asked her to restart his computer so he could be sure it would start up

properly after the problem she had just had. He talked her through the steps for

rebooting.

When the computer was running again properly, he thanked her warmly and hung

up, and Anna went back to the Finance department to finish the job she had been

working on.

Kurt Dillon's Story

Millard-Fenton Publishers was enthusiastic about the new author they were just

about to sign up, the retired CEO of a Fortune 500 company who had a

fascinating story to tell. Someone had steered the man to a business manager for

handling his negotiations. The business manager didn't want to admit he knew zip

about publishing contracts, so he hired an old friend to help him figure out what

he needed to know. The old friend, unfortunately, was not a very good choice.

Kurt Dillon used what we might call unusual methods in his research, methods

not entirely ethical..Kurt signed up for a free site on Geocities, in the name of Ron Vittaro, and

loaded a spy-ware program onto the new site. He changed the name of the

program to manuscript.doc.exe, so the name would appear to be a Word

document and not raise suspicion. In fact, this worked even better than Kurt had

anticipated; because the real Vittaro had never changed a default setting in his

Windows operating system called "Hide file extensions for known file types."

Because of that setting the file was actually displayed with the name

manuscript.doc.

Then he had a lady friend call Vittaro's secretary. Following Dillon's coaching,

she said, "I'm the executive assistant to Paul Spadone, president of Ultimate

Bookstores, in Toronto. Mr. Vittaro met my boss at a book fair a while back, and

asked him to call to discuss a project they might do together. Mr. Spadone is on

the road a lot, so he said I should find out when Mr. Vittaro will be in the office."

By the time the two had finished comparing schedules, the lady friend had

enough information to provide the attacker with a list of dates when Mr. Vittaro

would be in the office. Which meant he also knew when Vittaro would be out of

the office. It hadn't required much extra conversation to find out that Vittaro's

secretary would be taking advantage of his absence to get in a little skiing. For a

short span of time, both would be out of the office. Perfect.

LINGO

SPYWARE Specialized software used to covertly monitor a targets computer

activities. One form used to track the sites visited by internet shoppers so that on-line

advertisements can be tailored to their surfing habits. The other form is

analogous to a wiretap, except that the target device is a computer. The software

captures the activities of the user, including passwords and keystrokes typed,

email, chat conversations, instant messenger, all the web sites visited, and

screenshots of the display screen.

LINGO

SILENT INSTALL A method of installing a software application without the

computer user or operator being aware that such a action is taking place.

The first day they were supposed to be gone he placed a pretext urgent call just to

make sure, and was told by a receptionist that "Mr. Vittaro is not in the office and

neither is his secretary. Neither of them is expected any time today or tomorrow

or the next day."

His very first try at conning a junior employee into taking part in his scheme was

successful, and she didn't seem to blink an eye at being told to help him by.downloading a "manuscript," which was actually a popular, commercially

available spyware program that the attacker had modified for a silent install.

Using this method, the installation would not be detected by any antivirus

software. For some strange reason, antivirus manufacturers do not market

products that will detect commercially available spyware.

Immediately after the young woman had loaded the software onto Vittaro's

computer, Kurt went back up to the Geocities site and replaced the doc.exe file

with a book manuscript he found on the Internet. Just in case anyone stumbled on

the ruse and returned to the site to investigate what had taken place, all they'd

find would be an innocuous, amateurish, un-publishable book manuscript.

Once the program had been installed and the computer rebooted, it was set to

immediately become active. Ron Vittaro would return to town in a few days,

start to work, and the spyware would begin forwarding all the keystrokes typed

on his computer, including all outgoing emails and screen shots showing what

was displayed on his screen at that moment. It would all be sent at regular

intervals to a free email service provider in the Ukraine.

Within a few days after Vittaro's return, Kurt was plowing through the log files

piling up in his Ukrainian mailbox and before long had located confidential

emails that indicated just how far Millard-Fenton Publishing was willing to go in

making a deal with the author. Armed with that knowledge, it was easy for the

author's agent to negotiate much better terms than originally offered, without ever

running the risk of losing the deal altogether. Which, of course, meant a bigger

commission for the agent.

Analyzing the Con

In this ruse, the attacker made his success more likely by picking a new employee

to act as his proxy, counting on her being more willing to cooperate and be a

team player, and being less likely to have knowledge of the company, its people,

and good security practices which could thwart the attempt.

Because Kurt was pretexting as a vice president in his conversation with Anna, a

clerk in Finance, he knew that it would be very unlikely that she would question

his authority. On the contrary, she might entertain the thought that helping a VP

could gain her favor.

And the process he walked Anna through that had the effect of installing

the spyware appeared innocuous on its face. Anna had no idea that her seemingly

innocent actions had set an attacker up to gain valuable information that could be

used against the interests of the company..And why did he choose to forward the VP's message to an email account

in the Ukraine? For several reasons a far-off destination makes tracing or taking

action against an attacker much less likely. These types of crimes are generally

considered low priority in countries like this, where the police tend to hold the

view that committing a crime over the Internet isn't a noteworthy offense. For

that reason, using email drops in countries that are unlikely to cooperate with

U.S. law enforcement is an attractive strategy.

PREVENTING THE CON

A social engineer will always prefer to target an employee who is unlikely to

recognize that there is something suspicious about his requests. It makes his job

not only easier, but also less risky--as the stories in this chapter illustrate.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Asking a co-worker or subordinate to do a favor is a common practice. Social

engineers know how to exploit people's natural desire to help and be a team

player. An attacker exploits this positive human trait to deceive unsuspecting

employees into performing actions that advance him toward his goal. It's

important to understand this simple concept so you will be more likely to

recognize when another person is trying to manipulate you.

Deceiving the Unwary

I've emphasized earlier the need to train employees thoroughly enough that they

will never allow themselves to be talked into carrying out the instructions of a

stranger. All employees also need to understand the danger of carrying out a

request to take any action on another person's computer. Company policy should

prohibit this except when specifically approved by a manager. Allowable

situations include:

When the request is made by a person well known to you, with the request made

either face-to-face, or over the telephone when you unmistakably recognize the

voice of the caller.

When you positively verify the identity of the requestor through approved

procedures.

When the action is authorized by a supervisor or other person in authority who is

personally familiar with the requestor.

Employees must be trained not to assist people they do not personally know, even

if the person making the request claims to be an executive. Once security policies

concerning verification have been put in place, management must support.employees in adhering to these policies, even when it means that an employee

challenges a member of the executive staff who is asking the employee to

circumvent a security policy.

Every company also needs to have policies and procedures that guide employees

in responding to requests to take any action with computers or computer-related

equipment. In the story about the publishing company, the social engineer

targeted a new employee who had not been trained on information security

policies and procedures. To prevent this type of attack, every existing and new

employee must be told to follow a simple rule: Do not use any computer system

to perform an action requested by a stranger. Period.

Remember that any employee who has physical or electronic access to a

computer or an item of computer-related equipment is vulnerable to being

manipulated into taking some malicious action on behalf of an attacker.

Employees, and especially IT personnel, need to understand that allowing an

outsider to gain access to their computer networks is like giving your bank

account number to a telemarketer or giving your telephone calling card number to

a stranger in jail. Employees must give thoughtful attention to whether carrying

out a request can lead to disclosure of sensitive information or the compromising

of the corporate computer system.

IT people must also be on their guard against unknown callers posing as vendors.

In general, a company should consider having specific people designated as the

contacts for each technology vendor, with a policy in place that other employees

will not respond to vendor requests for information about or changes to any

telephone or computer equipment. That way, the designated people become

familiar with the vendor personnel who call or visit, and are less likely to be

deceived by an imposter. If a vendor calls even when the company does not have

a support contract, that should also raise suspicions.

Everyone in the organization needs to be made aware of information security

threats and vulnerabilities. Note that security guards and the like need to be given

not just security training, but training in information security, as well. Because

security guards frequently have physical access to the entire facility, they must be

able to recognize the types of social engineering attacks that may be used against

them.

Beware Spyware

Commercial spyware was once used mostly by parents to monitor what their

children were doing on the Internet, and by employers, supposedly to determine

which employees were goofing off by surfing the Internet. A more serious use.was to detect potential theft of information assets or industrial espionage.

Developers market their spyware by offering it as a tool to protect the children,

when in fact their true market is people who want to spy on someone. Nowadays,

the sale of spyware is driven to a great extent by people's desire to know if their

spouse or significant other is cheating on them.

Shortly before I began writing the spyware story in this book, the person who

receives email for me (because I'm not allowed to use the Internet) found a spam

email message advertising a group of spyware products. One of the items offered

was described like this:

FAVORITE! MUST HAVE:

This powerful monitoring and spy program secretly captures all keystrokes and

the time and title of all active windows to a text file, while running hidden in the

background. Logs can be encrypted and automatically sent to a specified email

address, or just recorded on the hard drive. Access to the program is password

protected and it can be hidden from the CTRL+ALT+DEL menu.

Use it to monitor typed URLs, chat sessions, emails and many other things (even

passwords).

Install without detection on ANY PC and email yourself the logs!

Antivirus Gap?

Antivirus software doesn't detect commercial spyware, thereby treating the

software as not malicious even though the intent is to spy on other people. So the

computer equivalent of wiretapping goes unnoticed, creating the risk that each of

us might be under illegal surveillance at any time. Of course, the antivirus

software manufacturers may argue that spyware can be used for legitimate

purposes, and therefore should not be treated as malicious. But the developers of

certain tools once used by the hacking community, which are now being freely

distributed or sold as security-related software, are nonetheless treated as

malicious code. There's a double standard here, and I'm left wondering why.

Another item offered in the same email promised to capture screen shots of the

user's computer, just like having a video camera looking over his shoulder. Some

of these software products do not even require physical access to the victim's

computer. Just install and configure the application remotely, and you have an

instant computer wiretap! The FBI must love technology.

With spyware so readily available, your enterprise needs to establish two levels

of protection. You should install spyware-detection software such as SpyCop

(available from www.spycop.com) on all workstations, and you should require.that employees initiate periodic scans. In addition, you must train employees

against the danger of being deceived into downloading a program, or opening an

email attachment that could install malicious software.

In addition to preventing spyware from being installed while an employee is

away from his desk for a coffee break, lunch, or a meeting, a policy mandating

that all employees lock their computer systems with a screen saver password or

similar method will substantially mitigate the risk of an unauthorized person

being able to access a worker's computer. No one slipping into the person's

cubicle or office will be able to access any of their files, read their email, or

install spyware or other malicious software. The resources necessary to enable

the screensaver password are nil, and the benefit of protecting employee

workstations is substantial. The cost-benefit analysis in this circumstance should

be a no-brainer..Chapter 13

Clever Cons

By now you've figured out that when a stranger calls with a request for sensitive

information or something that could be of value to an attacker, the person

receiving the call must be trained to get the caller's phone number, and call back

to verify that the person is really who he claims to be--a company employee, or

an employee of a business partner, or a technical support representative from one

of your vendors, for example.

Even when a company has an established procedure that the employees follow

carefully for verifying callers, sophisticated attackers are still able to use a

number of tricks to deceive their victims into believing they are who they claim

to be. Even security conscious employees can be duped by methods such as the

following.

THE MISLEADING CALLER ID

Anyone who has ever received a call on a cell phone has observed the feature

known as caller ID--that familiar display showing the telephone number of the

caller. In a business setting, it offers the advantage of allowing a worker to tell at

a glance whether the call coming in is from a fellow employee or from outside

the company.

Many years ago some ambitious phone phreakers introduced themselves to the

wonders of caller ID before the phone company was even allowed to offer the

service to the public. They had a great time freaking people out by answering the

phone and greeting the caller by name before they said a word.

Just when you thought it was safe, the practice of verifying identity by trusting

what you see--what appears on the caller ID display--is exactly what the attacker

may be counting on.

Linda's Phone Call

Day/Time: Tuesday, July 23, 3:12 P.M.

Place." The offices of the Finance Department, Starbeat Aviation

Linda Hill's phone rang just as she was in the middle of writing a memo to her

boss. She glanced at her caller ID, which showed that the call was from the

corporate office in New York, but from someone named Victor Martin--not a

name she recognized..She thought of letting the call roll over to voice mail so she wouldn't break the

flow of thought on the memo. But curiosity got the better of her. She picked up

the phone and the caller introduced himself and said he was from PR, and

working on some material for the CEO. "He's on his way to Boston for meetings

with some of our bankers. He needs the top-line financials for the current

quarter," he said. "And one more thing. He also needs the financial projections on

the Apache project," Victor added, using the code name for a product that was to

be one of the company's major releases in the spring.

She asked for his email address, but he said he was having a problem receiving

email that tech support was working on, so could she fax it instead? She said that

would be fine, and he gave her the internal phone extension to his fax machine.

She sent the fax a few minutes later.

But Victor did not work for the PR department. In fact, he didn't even work for

the company.

Jack's Story

Jack Dawkins had started his professional career at an early age as a pickpocket

working games at Yankee Stadium, on crowded subway platforms, and among

the night-time throng of Times Square tourists. He proved so nimble and artful

that he could take a watch off a man's wrist without his knowing. But in his

awkward teenage years he had grown clumsy and been caught. In Juvenile Hall,

Jack learned a new trade with a much lower risk of getting nabbed.

His current assignment called for him to get a company's quarterly profit and loss

statement and cash flow information, before the data was filed with the Securities

and Exchange Commission (SEC) and made public. His client was a dentist who

didn't want to explain why he wanted the information. To Jack the man's caution

was laughable. He'd seen it all before--the guy probably had a gambling problem,

or else an expensive girlfriend his wife hadn't found out about yet. Or maybe he

had just been bragging to his wife about how smart he was in the stock market;

now he had lost a bundle and wanted to make a big investment on a sure thing by

knowing which way the company's stock price was going to go when they

announced their quarterly results.

People are surprised to find out how little time it takes a thoughtful social

engineer to figure out a way of handling a situation he's never faced before. By

the time Jack got home from his meeting with the dentist, he had already formed

a plan. His friend Charles Bates worked for a company, Panda Importing, that

had its own telephone switch, or PBX..In terms familiar to people knowledgeable about phone systems, the PBX was

connected to a digital telephone service known as a T1, configured as Primary

Rate Interface ISDN (integrated services digital network) or PRI ISDN. What this

meant was that every time a call was placed from Panda, setup and other call

processing information went out over a data channel to the phone company's

switch; the information included the calling party number, which (unless

blocked) is delivered to the caller ID device at the receiving end.

Jack's friend knew how to program the switch so the person receiving the call

would see on his caller ID, not the actual phone number at the Panda office, but

whatever phone number he had programmed into the switch. This trick works

because local phone companies do not bother to validate the calling number

received from the customer against the actual phone numbers the customer is

paying for.

All Jack Dawkins needed was access to any such telephone service. Happily his

friend and sometime partner in crime, Charles Bates, was always glad to lend a

helping hand for a nominal fee. On this occasion, Jack and Charles temporarily

reprogrammed the company's telephone switch so that calls from a particular

telephone line located on the Panda premises would spoof Victor Martin's

internal telephone number, making the call appear to be coming from within

Starbeat Aviation.

The idea that your caller ID can be made to show any number you wish is so little

known that it's seldom questioned. In this case, Linda was happy to fax the

requested information to the guy she thought was from PR.

When Jack hung up, Charles reprogrammed his company's telephone switch,

restoring the telephone number to the original settings.

Analyzing the Con

Some companies don't want customers or vendors to know the telephone

numbers of their employees. For example, Ford may decide that calls from their

Customer Support Center should show the 800-number for the Center and a name

like "Ford Support," instead of the real direct-dial phone number of each support

representative placing a call. Microsoft may want to give their employees the

option of telling people their phone number, instead of having everyone they call

be able to glance at their caller ID and know their extension. In this way the

company is able to maintain the confidentiality of internal numbers.

But this same capability of reprogramming provides a handy tactic for the

prankster, bill collector, telemarketer, and, of course, the social engineer..VARIATION: THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES IS

CALLING

As co-host of a radio show in Los Angeles called "Darkside of the Internet" on

KFI Talk Radio, I worked under the station's program director. David, one of the

most committed and hardworking people I've ever met, is very difficult to reach

by telephone because he's so busy. He's one of those people who doesn't answer a

call unless he sees from the caller ID that it's someone he needs to talk to.

When I'd phone him, because I have call blocking on my cell phone, he could not

tell who was calling and wouldn't pick up the call. It would roll over to voice

mail, and it became very frustrating for me.

I talked over what to do about this with a long-time friend who is the cofounder

of a real estate firm that provides office space for high-tech companies. Together

we came up with a plan. He had access to his company's Meridian telephone

switch, which gives him the ability to program the calling party number, as

described in the previous story. Whenever I needed to reach the program director

and couldn't get a call through, I would ask my friend to program any number of

my choosing to appear on the caller ID. Sometimes I'd have him make the call

look as if it was coming from David's office assistant, or sometimes from the

holding company that owns the station.

But my favorite was programming the call to appear from David's own home

telephone number, which he always picked up. H1 give the guy credit, though.

He always had a good sense of humor about it when he'd pick up the phone and

discover I had fooled him once again. The best partwas that he'd then stay on the

line long enough to find out what I wanted and resolve whatever the issue was.

When I demonstrated this little trick on the Art Bell Show, I spoofed my caller ID

to display the name and number of the Los Angeles headquarters of the FBI. Art

was quite shocked about the whole affair and admonished me for doing

something illegal. But I pointed out to him that it's perfectly legal, as long as it's

not an attempt to commit fraud. After the program I received several hundred

emails asking me to explain how I had done it. Now you know.

This is the perfect tool to build credibility for the social engineer. If, for example,

during the research stage of the social engineering attack cycle, it was discovered

that the target had caller ID, the attacker could spoof his or her own number as

being from a trusted company or employee. A bill collector can make his or her

calls appear to come from your place of business.

But stop and think about the implications. A computer intruder can call you at

home claiming to be from the IT department at your company. The person on the.line urgently needs your password to restore your files from a server crash. Or the

caller ID displays the name and number of your bank or stock brokerage house,

the pretty sounding girl just needs to verify your account numbers and your

mother's maiden name. For good measure, she also needs to verify your ATM

PIN because of some system problem. A stock market boiler-room operation can

make their calls seem to come from Merrill Lynch or Citibank. Someone out to

steal your identity could call, apparently from Visa, and convince you to tell him

your Visa card number. A guy with a grudge could call and claim to be from the

IRS or the FBI.

If you have access to a telephone system connected to a PRI, plus a bit of

programming knowledge that you can probably acquire from the system vendor's

Web site, you can use this tactic for playing cool tricks on your friends. Know

anybody with overblown political aspirations? You could program the referral

number as 202 456-1414, and his caller ID will display the name "WHITE

HOUSE."

He'll think he's getting a call from the president!

The moral of the story is simple: Caller ID cannot be trusted, except when being

used to identify internal calls. Both at work and at home, everyone needs to

become aware of the caller ID trick and recognize that the name or phone number

shown in a caller ID display cannot ever be trusted for verification of identity.

MITNICK MESSAGE

The next time you receive a call and your caller ID shows it's from your dear old

mom, you never know--it might be from a sweet little old social engineer.

THE INVISIBLE EMPLOYEE

Shirley Cutlass has found a new and exciting way to make fast money. No more

putting in long hours at the salt mine. She has joined the hundreds of other scam

artists involved in the crime of the decade. She is an identity thief.

Today she has set her sights on getting confidential information from the

customer service department of a credit card company. After doing the usual kind

of homework, she calls the target company and tells the switchboard operator

who answers that she'd like to be connected to the Telecom Department.

Reaching Telecom, she asks for the voice mail administrator.

Using information gathered from her research, she explains that her name is

Norma Todd from the Cleveland office. Using a ruse that should by now be

familiar to you, she says she'll be traveling to corporate headquarters for a week,

and she'll need a voice mailbox there so she won't have to make long distance.calls to check her voice mail messages. No need for a physical telephone

connection, she says, just a voice mailbox. He says he'll take care of it, he'll call

her back when it's set up to give her the information she'll need.

In a seductive voice, she says "I'm on my way into a meeting, can I call you back

in an hour.

When she calls back, he says it's all set up, and gives her the information-- her

extension number and temporary password. He asks whether she knows how to

change the voice mail password, and she lets him talk her through the steps,

though she knows them at least as well as he does.

"And by the way," she asks, "from my hotel, what number do I call to check my

messages?" He gives her the number.

Shirley phones in, changes the password, and records her new outgoing greeting.

Shirley Attacks

So far it's all been an easy setup. She's now ready to use the art of deception.

She calls the customer service department of the company. "I'm with Collections,

in the Cleveland office," she says, and then launches into a variation on the by-now

familiar excuse. "My computer is being fixed by technical support and I

need your help looking up this information." And she goes on to provide the

name and date of birth of the person whose identity she is intent on stealing. Then

she lists the information she wants: address, mother's maiden name, card number,

credit limit, available credit, and payment history. "Call me back at this number,"

she says, giving the internal extension number that the voice mail administrator

set up for her. "And if I'm not available, just leave the information on my voice

mail."

She keeps busy with errands for the rest of the morning, and then checks her

voice mail that afternoon. It's all there, everything she asked for. Before hanging

up, Shirley clears the outgoing message; it would be careless to leave a recording

of her voice behind.

And identify theft, the fastest growing crime in America, the "in" crime of the

new century, is about to have another victim. Shirley uses the credit-card and

identity information she just obtained, and begins running up charges on the

victim's card..Analyzing the Con

In this ruse, the attacker first duped the company's voice mail administrator into

believing she was an employee, so that he would set up a temporary voice

mailbox. If he bothered to check at all, he would have found that the name and

telephone number she gave matched the listings in the corporate employee

database.

The rest was simply a matter of giving a reasonable excuse about a computer

problem, asking for the desired information, and requesting that the response be

left on voice mail. And why would any employee be reluctant to share

information with a co-worker? Since the phone number that Shirley provided was

clearly an internal extension, there was no reason for any suspicion.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Try calling your own voice mail once in a while; if you hear an outgoing message

that's not yours, you may have just encountered your first social engineer.

THE HELPFUL SECRETARY

Cracker Robert Jorday had been regularly breaking into the computer net works

of a global company, Rudolfo Shipping, Inc. The company eventually recognized

that someone was hacking into their terminal server, an, that through that server

the user could connect to any computer system at the company. To safeguard the

corporate network, the company decide, to require a dial-up password on every

terminal server.

Robert called the Network Operations Center posing as an attorney with the

Legal Department and said he was having trouble connecting to the network. The

network administrator he reached explained that there had been some recent

security issues, so all dial-up access users would need to obtain the monthly

password from their manager. Robert wondered what method was being used to

communicate each month's password to the managers and how he could obtain it.

The answer, it turned out, was that the password for the upcoming month was

sent in a memo via office, mail to each company manager.

That made things easy. Robert did a little research, called the company just after

the first of the month, and reached the secretary of one manager who gave her

name as Janet. He said, "Janet, hi. This is Randy Goldstein in Research and

Development. I know I probably got the memo with this month's password for

logging into the terminal server from outside the company but I can't find it

anywhere. Did you get your memo for this, month?"

Yes, she said, she did get it..He asked her if she would fax it to him, and she agreed. He gave her the fax

number of the lobby receptionist in a different building on the company campus,

where he had already made arrangements for faxes to be held for him, and would

then arrange for the password fax to be forwarded. This time, though, Robert

used a different fax-forwarding method. He gave the receptionist a fax number

that went to an on-line fax service. When this service receives a fax, the

automated system sends it to the subscriber's email address.

The new password arrived at the email dead drop that Robert set up on a free

email service in China. He was sure that if the fax was ever traced, the

investigator would be pulling out his hair trying to gain cooperation from Chinese

officials, who, he knew, were more than a little reluctant to be helpful in matters

like this. Best of all, he never had to show up physically at the location of the fax

machine.

MITNICK MESSAGE

The skilled social engineer is very clever at influencing other people to do favors

for him. Receiving a fax and forwarding it to another location appears so

harmless that it's all too easy to persuade a receptionist or someone else to agree

to do it. When somebody asks for a favor involving information, if you don't

know him or can't verify his identity, just say no.

TRAFFIC COURT

Probably everyone who has ever been given a speeding ticket has daydreamed

about some way of beating it. Not by going to traffic school, or simply paying the

fine, or taking a chance on trying to convince the judge about some technicality

like how long it has been since the police-car speedometer or the radar gun was

checked. No, the sweetest scenario would be beating the ticket by outsmarting the

system.

The Con

Although I would not recommend trying this method of beating a traffic ticket (as

the saying goes, don't try this at home) still, this is a good example of how the art

of deception can be used to help the social engineer.

Let's call this traffic violater Paul Durea.

First Steps

"LAPD, Hollenbeck Division."

"Hi, I'd like to talk to the Subpoena Control."

"I'm the subpoena clerk."."Fine. This is Attorney John Leland, of Meecham, Meecham, and Talbott. I need

to subpoena an officer on a case."

"Okay, which officer?"

"Do you have Officer Kendall in your division?"

"What's his serial number?"

"21349."

"Yes. When do you need him?"

"Some time next month, but I need to subpoena several other witnesses on the

case and then tell the court what days will work for us. Are there any days next

month Officer Kendall won't be available?"

"Let's see... He has vacation days on the 20th through the 23rd, and he has

training days on the 8th and 16th."

"Thanks. That's all I need right now. I'll call you back when the court date is set."

Municipal Court, Clerk's Counter

Paul: "I'd like to schedule a court date on this traffic ticket."

Clerk: "Okay. I can give you the 26th of next month."

"Well, I'd like to schedule an arraignment."

"You want an arraignment on a traffic ticket?"

"Yes."

"Okay. We can set the arraignment tomorrow in the morning or afternoon. What

would you like?"

"Afternoon."

"Arraignment is tomorrow at 1:30 P.M. in Courtroom Six." "Thanks. I'll be

there."

Municipal Court, Courtroom Six

Date: Thursday, 1:45 P.M.

Clerk: "Mr. Durea, please approach the bench."

Judge: "Mr. Durea, do you understand the rights that have been explained to you

this afternoon?"

Paul: "Yes, your honor."

Judge: "Do you want to take the opportunity to attend traffic school? Your case

will be dismissed after successful completion of an eight-hour course. I've

checked your record and you are presently eligible."

Paul: "No, your honor. I respectfully request that the case be set for trial. One

more thing, your honor, I'll be travelling out of the country, but I'm available on.the 8th or 9th. Would it be possible to set my case for trial on either of those

days? I'm leaving on a business trip for Europe tomorrow, and I return in four

weeks."

Judge: "Very well. Trial is set for June 8th, 8:30 A.M., Courtroom Four."

Paul: "Thank you, your honor."

Municipal Court, Courtroom Four

Paul arrived at court early on the 8th. When the judge came in, the clerk gave him

a list of the cases for which the officers had not appeared. The judge called the

defendants, including Paul, and told them their cases were dismissed.

Analyzing the Con

When an officer writes a ticket, he signs it with his name and his badge number

(or whatever his personal number is called in his agency). Finding his station is a

piece of cake. A call to directory assistance with the name of the law enforcement

agency shown on the citation (highway patrol, county sheriff, or whatever) is

enough to get a foot in the door. Once the agency is contacted, they can refer the

caller to the correct telephone number for the subpoena clerk serving the

geographical area where the traffic stop was made.

Law enforcement officers are subpoenaed for court appearances with regularity;

it comes with the territory. When a district attorney or a defense lawyer needs an

officer to testify, if he knows how the system works, he first checks to make sure

the officer will be available. That's easy to do; it just takes a call to the subpoena

clerk for that agency.

Usually in those conversations, the attorney asks if the officer in question will be

available on such-and-such a date. For this ruse, Paul needed a bit of tact; he had

to offer a plausible reason why the clerk should tell him what dates the officer

would not be available.

When he first went to the court building, why didn't Paul simply tell the

court clerk what date he wanted? Easy--from what I understand, traffic-court

clerks in most places don't allow members of the public to select court dates. If a

date the clerk suggests doesn't work for the person, she'll offer an alternative or

two, but that's as far as she will bend. On the other hand, anyone who is willing to

take the extra time of showing up for an arraignment is likely to have better luck.

Paul knew he was entitled to ask for an arraignment. And he knew the judges are

often willing to accommodate a request for a specific date. He carefully asked for.dates that coincided with the officer's training days, knowing that in his state,

officer training takes precedence over an appearance in traffic court.

MITNICK MESSAGE

The human mind is a marvelous creation. It's interesting to note how imaginative

people can be at developing deceptive ways to get what they want or to get out of

a sticky situation. You have to use the same creativity and imagination to

safeguard information and computer systems in the public and private sectors. So,

folks, when devising your company's security policies--be creative and think

outside the box.

And in traffic court, when the officer does not show up--case dismissed. No

fines. No traffic school. No points. And, best of all, no record of a traffic offense!

My guess is that some police officials, court officers, district attorneys and the

like will read this story and shake their heads because they know that this

ruse does work. But shaking their heads is all they'll do. Nothing will change. I'd

be willing to bet on it. As the character Cosmo says in the 1992 movie Sneakers,

"It's all about the ones and zeros"--meaning that in the end, everything comes

down to information.

As long as law enforcement agencies are willing to give information about an

officer's schedule to virtually anyone who calls, the ability to get out of traffic

tickets will always exist. Do you have similar gaps in your company or

organization's procedures that a clever social engineer can take advantage of to

get information you'd rather they didn't have?

SAMANTHA'S REVENGE

Samantha Gregson was angry.

She had worked hard for her college degree in business, and stacked up a pile of

student loans to do it. It had always been drummed into her that a college degree

was how you got a career instead of a job, how you earned the big bucks. And

then she graduated and couldn't find a decent job anywhere.

How glad she had been to get the offer from Lambeck Manufacturing. Sure, it

was humiliating to accept a secretarial position, but Mr. Cartright had said how

eager they were to have her, and taking the secretarial job would put her on the

spot when the next non-administrative position opened up.

Two months later she heard that one of Cartright's junior product managers was

leaving. She could hardly sleep that night, imagining herself on the fifth floor, in

an office with a door, attending meetings and making decisions..The next morning she went first thing to see Mr. Cartright. He said they felt she

needed to learn more about the industry before she was ready for a professional

position. And then they went and hired an amateur from outside the company

who knew less about the industry than she did.

It was about then that it began to dawn on her: The company had plenty of

women, but they were almost all secretaries. They weren't going to give her a

management job. Ever.

Payback

It took her almost a week to figure out how she was going to pay them back.

About a month earlier a guy from an industry trade magazine had tried to hit on

her when he came in for the new product launch. A few weeks later he called her

up at work and said if she would send him some advance information on the

Cobra 273 product, he'd send her flowers, and if it was really hot information that

he used in the magazine, he'd make a special trip in from Chicago just to take her

out to dinner.

She had been in young Mr. Johannson's office one day shortly after that when he

logged onto the corporate network. Without thinking, she had watched his fingers

(shoulder surfing, this is sometimes called). He had entered "marty63" as his

password.

Her plan was beginning to come together. There was a memo she remembered

typing not long after she came to the company. She found a copy in the files and

typed up a new version, using language from the original one. Her version read:

TO: C. Pelton, IT dept.

FROM: L. Cartright, Development

Martin Johansson will be working with a special projects team in my department.

I hereby authorize him to have access to the servers used by the engineering

group. Mr. Johansson's security profile is to be updated to grant him the same

access rights as a product developer.

Louis Cartright

LINGO

SHOULDER SURFING The act of watching a person type at his computer

keyboard to detect and steal his password or other user information..When most everybody was gone at lunch, she cut Mr. Cartright's signature from

the original memo, pasted it onto her new version, and daubed Wite-Out around

the edges. She made a copy of the result, and then made a copy of the copy. You

could barely see the edges around the signature. She sent the fax from the

machine "near Mr. Cartright's office.

Three days later, she stayed after hours and waited till everyone left. She walked

into Johannson's office, and tried logging onto the network with his username and

the password, marry63. It worked.

In minutes she had located the product specification files for the Cobra 273, and

downloaded them to a Zip disk.

The disk was safely in her purse as she walked in the cool night-time breeze to

the parking lot. It would be on its way to the reporter that night.

Analyzing the Con

A disgruntled employee, a search through the files, a quick cut-paste-and Wite-Out

operation, a little creative copying, and a fax. And, voila!--she has access to

confidential marketing and product specifications.

And a few days later, a trade magazine journalist has a big scoop with the specs

and marketing plans of a hot new product that will be in the hands of magazine

subscribers throughout the industry months in advance of the product's release.

Competitor companies will have several months head start on developing

equivalent products and having their ad campaigns ready to undermine the Cobra

273.

Naturally the magazine will never say where they got the scoop.

PREVENTING THE CON

When asked for any valuable, sensitive, or critical information that could be of

benefit to a competitor or anyone else, employees must be aware that using caller

ID as a means of verifying the identity of an outside caller is not acceptable.

Some other means of verification must be used, such as checking with the

person's supervisor that the request was appropriate and that the user has

authorization to receive the information.

The verification process requires a balancing act that each Company must define

for itself: Security versus productivity. What priority is going to be assigned to

enforcing security measures? Will employees be resistant to following security

procedures, and even circumvent them in order to complete their job

responsibilities? Do employees understand why security is important to the.company and themselves? These questions need to be answered to develop a

security policy based on corporate culture and business needs.

Most people inevitably see anything that interferes with getting their work done

as an annoyance, and may circumvent any security measures that appear to be a

waste of time. Motivating employees to make security part of their everyday

responsibilities through education and awareness is key.

Although caller ID service should never be used as a means of authentication for

voice calls from outside the company, another method called automatic number

identification (ANI) can. This service is provided when a company subscribes to

toll-flee services where the company pays for the incoming calls and is reliable

for identification. Unlike caller ID, the telephone company switch does not use

any information that is sent from a customer when providing the calling number.

The number transmitted by ANI is the billing number assigned to the calling

party.

Note that several modem manufacturers have added a caller ID feature into their

products, protecting the corporate network by allowing remote-access calls only

from a list ofpreauthorized telephone numbers. Caller ID modems are an

acceptable means of authentication in a low-security environment but, as should

be clear by now, spoofing caller ID is a relatively easy technique for computer

intruders, and so should not be relied on for proving the caller's identity or

location in a high-security setting.

To address the case of identity theft, as in the story about deceiving an

administrator to create a voice mailbox on the corporate phone system, make it a

policy that all phone service, all voice mailboxes, and all entries to the corporate

directory, both in print and on line, must be requested in writing, on a form

provided for the purpose. The employee's manager should sign the request, and

the voice mail administrator should verify the signature.

Corporate security policy should require that new computer accounts or increases

in access rights be granted only after positive verification of the person making

the request, such as a callback to the system manager or administrator, or his or

her designee, at the phone number listed in the print or on-line company

directory. If the company uses secure email where employees can digitally sign

messages, this alternative verification method may also be acceptable.

Remember that every employee, regardless of whether he has access to company

computer systems, may be duped by a social engineer. Everyone must be

included in security awareness training. Administrative assistants, receptionists,

telephone operators, and security guards must be made familiar with the types of.social engineering attack most likely to be directed against them so that they will

be better prepared to defend against those attacks..Chapter 14

Industrial Espionage

The threat of information attacks against government, corporations, and

university systems is well established. Almost every day, the media reports a new

computer virus, denial of service attack, or theft of credit card information from

an e-commerce Web site.

We read about cases of industrial espionage such as Borland accusing Symantec

of stealing trade secrets, Cadence Design Systems filing a suit charging the theft

of source code by a competitor. Many business people read these stories and

think it could never happen at their company.

It's happening every day.

VARIATION ON A SCHEME

The ruse described in the following tale has probably been pulled off many times,

even though it sounds like something taken out of a Hollywood movie like The

Insider, or from the pages of a John Grisham novel.

Class Action

Imagine that a massive class-action lawsuit is raging against a major

pharmaceutical company, Pharmomedic. The suit claims that they knew one of

their very popular drugs had a devastating side effect, but one that would not be

evident until a patient had been on the medication for years. The suit alleges that

they had results from a number of research studies that revealed this danger, but

suppressed the evidence and never turned it over to the FDA as required.

William ("Billy") Chaney, the attorney of record on the masthead of the New

York law firm that filed the class-action suit, has depositions from two

Pharmomedic doctors supporting the claim. But both are retired, neither has any

files or documentation, and neither would make a strong, convincing witness.

Billy knows he's on shaky ground. Unless he can get a copy of one of those

reports, or some internal memo or communication between company executives,

his whole case will fall apart.

So he hires a firm he's used before: Andreeson and Sons, private investigators.

Billy doesn't know how Pete and his people get the stuff they do, and he doesn't

want to know. All he knows is that Pete Andreeson is one good investigator.

To Andreeson, an assignment like this is what he calls a black bag job. The first

rule is that the law firms and companies that hire him never learn how he gets his

information so that they always have complete, plausible deniability. If anybody.is going to have his feet shoved into boiling water, it's going to be Pete, and for

what he collects in fees on the big jobs, he figures it's worth the risk. Besides, he

gets such personal satisfaction from outsmarting smart people.

If the documents that Chaney wants him to find actually existed and haven't been

destroyed, they'll be somewhere in the files of Pharmomedic. But finding them in

the massive files of a large corporation would be a huge task. On the other hand,

suppose they've turned copies over to their law firm, Jenkins and Petry? If the

defense attorneys knew those documents existed and didn't turn them over as part

of the discovery process, then they have violated the legal profession's canon of

ethics, and violated the law, as well. In Pete's book, that makes any attack fair

game.

Pete's Attack

Pete gets a couple of his people started on research and within days he knows

what company Jenkins and Petty uses for storing their offsite backups. And he

knows that the storage company maintains a list of the names of people whom the

law firm has authorized to pick up tapes from storage. He also knows that each of

these people has his or her own password. Pete sends two of his people out on a

black bag job.

The men tackle the lock using a lock pick gun ordered on the Web at

www.southord.com. Within several minutes they slip into the offices of the

storage firm around 3 a.m. one night and boot up a PC. They smile when they see

the Windows 98 logo because it means this will be a piece of cake. Windows 98

does not require any form of authentication. After abit of searching, they locate a

Microsoft Access database with the names of people authorized by each of the

storage company customers to pick up tapes. They add a phony name to the

authorization list for Jenkins and Petry, a name matching one on a phony driver's

license one of the men has already obtained. Could they have broken into the

locked storage area and tried to locate the tapes their client wanted? Sure--but

then all the company's customers, including the law firm, would have certainly

been notified of the breach. And the attackers would have lost an advantage:

Professionals always like to leave an opening for future access, should the need

arise.

Following a standard practice of industrial spies to keep something in the back

pocket for future use, just in case, they also made a copy of the file containing the

authorization list onto a floppy disk. None of them had any idea how it might

ever prove useful, but it's just one of those "We're here, we might just as well"

things that every now and then turns out to be valuable..The next day, one of the same men called the storage company, used the name

they had added to the authorization list, and gave the corresponding password. He

asked for all the Jenkins and Petry tapes dated within the last month, and said that

a messenger service would come by to pick up the package. By mid-afternoon,

Andreeson had the tapes. His people restored all the data to their own computer

system, ready to search at leisure. Andreeson was very pleased that the law firm,

like most other businesses, didn't bother encrypting their backup data.

The tapes were delivered back to the storage company the next day and no one

was the wiser.

MITNICK MESSAGE

Valuable information must be protected no matter what form it takes or where it

is located. An organization's customer list has the same value whether in

hardcopy form or an electronic file at your office or in a storage box. Social

engineers always prefer the easiest to circumvent, least defended point of attack.

A company's offsite backup storage facility is seen as having less risk of

detection or getting caught. Every organization that stores any valuable, sensitive,

or critical data with third parties should encrypt their data to protect its

confidentiality.

Analyzing the Con

Because of lax physical security, the bad guys were easily able to pick the lock of

the storage company, gain access to the computer, and modify the

database containing the list of people authorized to have access to the storage

unit. Adding a name to the list allowed the imposters to obtain the computer

backup tapes they were after, without having to break into the firm's storage unit.

Because most businesses don't encrypt backup data, the information was theirs

for the taking.

This incident provides one more example of how a vendor company that does not

exercise reasonable security precautions can make it easy for an attacker to

compromise their customer's information assets.

THE NEW BUSINESS PARTNER

Social engineers have a big advantage over con men and grifters, and the

advantage is distance. A grifter can only cheat you by being in your presence,

allowing you to give a good description of him afterward or even call the cops if

you catch on to the ruse early enough.

Social engineers ordinarily avoid that risk like the plague. Sometimes, though,

the risk is necessary, and justified by the potential reward..Jessica's Story

Jessica Andover was feeling very good about getting a job with a hotshot robotics

company. Sure, it was only a start-up and they couldn't pay very much, but it was

small, the people were friendly, and there was the excitement of knowing her

stock options just might turn out to make her rich. Okay, maybe not a millionaire

like the company founders would be, but rich enough.

Which was how it happened that Rick Daggot got a glowing smile when he

walked into the lobby that Tuesday morning in August. In his expensive- looking

suit (Armani) and his heavy gold wrist-watch (a Rolex President), with his

immaculate haircut, he had that same manly, self-confident air that had driven all

the girls crazy when Jessica was in high school.

"Hi," he said. "I'm Rick Daggot and I'm here for my meeting with Larry."

Jessica's smile faded. "Larry?" she said. "Larry's on vacation all week." "I have

an appointment with him at one o'clock. I just flew in from Louisville to meet

with him," Rick said, as he drew out his Palm, turned it on, and showed her.

She looked at it and gave a small shake of her head. "The 20th," she said. "That's

next week." He took the palmtop back and stared at it. "Oh, no!" he groaned. "I

can't believe what a stupid mistake I made."

"Can I book a return flight for you, at least?" she asked, feeling sorry for

him.

While she made the phone call, Rick confided that he and Larry had arranged to

set up a strategic marketing alliance. Rick's company was producing products for

the manufacturing and assembly line, items that would perfectly complement

their new product, the C2Alpha. Rick's products and the C2Alpha together would

make a strong solution that would open up important industrial markets for both

companies.

When Jessica had finished making his reservation on a late afternoon flight, Rick

said, "Well, at least I could talk to Steve if he's available." But Steve, the

company's VP and cofounder, was also out of the office.

Rick, being very friendly to Jessica and flirting just a little, then suggested that, as

long as he was there and his flight home wasn't till late afternoon, he'd like to

take some of the key people to lunch. And he added, "Including you, of course--is

there somebody who can fill in for you at lunchtime..Flushed at the idea of being included, Jessica asked, "Who do you want to

come?" He tapped his palmtop again and named a few people--two engineers

from R&D, the new sales and marketing man, and the finance guy assigned to the

project. Rick suggested she tell them about his relationship with the company,

and that he'd like to introduce himself to them. He named the best restaurant in

the area, a place where Jessica had always wanted to go, and said he'd book the

table himself, for 12:30, and would call back later in the morning to make sure

everything was all set.

When they gathered at the restaurant--the four of them plus Jessica their table

wasn't ready yet, so they settled at the bar, and Rick made it clear that drinks and

lunch were on him. Rick was a man with style and class, the kind of person who

makes you feel comfortable from the very first, the same way you feel with

someone you've known for years. He always seemed to know just the right thing

to say, had a lively remark or something funny whenever the conversation

lagged, and made you feel good just being around him.

He shared just enough details about his own company's products that they could

envision the joint marketing solution he seemed so animated about. He named

several Fortune 500 companies that his firm was already selling to, until everyone

at the table began to picture their product becoming a success from the day the

first units rolled out of the factory.

Then Rick walked over to Brian, one of the engineers. While the others chatted

among themselves, Rick shared some ideas privately with Brian, and drew him

out about the unique features of the C2Alpha and what set it apart from anything

the competition had. He found out about a couple of features the company was

downplaying that Brian was proud of and thought really "neat."

Rick worked his way along the line, chatting quietly with each. The marketing

guy was happy for a chance to talk about the roll-out date and marketing plans.

And the bean counter pulled an envelope from his pocket and wrote down details

of the material and manufacturing costs, price point and expected margin, and

what kind of deal he was trying to work out with each of the vendors, which he

listed by name.

By the time their table was ready, Rick had exchanged ideas with everybody and

had won admirers all along the line. By the end of the meal, they each shook

hands with Rick in turn and thanked him. Rick swapped business cards with

each and mentioned in passing to Brian, the engineer, that he wanted to have a

longer discussion as soon as Larry returned..The following day Brian picked up his telephone to find that the caller was Rick,

who said he had just finished speaking with Larry. I'll be coming back in on

Monday to work out some of the specifics with him," Rick said, "and he wants

me to be up to speed on your product. He said you should email the latest designs

and specs to him. He'll pick out the parts he wants me to have and forward them

on to me."

The engineer said that would be fine. Good, Rick answered. He went on, "Larry

wanted you to know he's having a problem retrieving his email. Instead of

sending the stuff to his regular account, he arranged with the hotel's business

center to set up a Yahoo mail account for him. He says you should send the files

to larryrobotics@yahoo.com."

The following Monday morning, when Larry walked into the office looking

tanned and relaxed, Jessica was primed and eager to gush over Rick. "What a

great guy. He took a bunch of us to lunch, even me." Larry looked confused.

"Rick? Who the hell is Rick?"

"What're you talking about?--your new business partner." "What!!!???"

"And everybody was so impressed with what good questions he asked." "I don't

know any Rick ..."

"What's the matter with you? Is this a joke, Larry--you're just fooling with me,

right?"

"Get the executive team into the conference room. Like now. No matter what

they're doing. And everybody who was at that lunch. Including you."

They sat around the table in a somber mood, hardly speaking. Larry walked in,

sat down and said, "I do not know anybody named Rick. I do not have a new

business partner I've been keeping secret from all of you. Which I would have

thought was obvious. If there's a practical ,joker in our midst, I want him to speak

up now."

Not a sound. The room seemed to be growing darker moment by moment.

Finally Brian spoke. "Why didn't you say something when I sent you

that email with the product specs and source code?"

"What email! ?"

Brian stiffened. "Oh... shit!".Cliff, the other engineer, chimed in. "He gave us all business cards. We just need

to call him and see what the bell's going on."

Brian pulled out his palmtop, called up an entry, and scooted the device

across the table to Larry. Still hoping against hope, they all watched as if

entranced while Larry dialed. After a moment, he stabbed the speakerphone

button and everyone heard a busy signal. After trying the number several times

over a period of twenty minutes, a frustrated Larry dialed the operator to ask for

an emergency interruption.

A few moments later, the operator came back on the line. She said in a

challenging tone, "Sir, where did you get this number?" Larry told her it was on

the business card of a man he needed to contact urgently. The operator, said, "I'm

sorry. That's a phone company test number. It always rings busy."

Larry started making a list of what information had been shared with Rick. The

picture was not pretty.

Two police detectives came and took a report. After listening to the story, they

pointed out that no state crime had been committed; there was nothing they could

do. They advised Larry to contact the FBI because they have jurisdiction over

any crimes involving interstate commerce. When Rick Daggot asked the engineer

to forward the test results by misrepresenting himself, he may have committed a

federal crime, but Rick would have to speak with the FBI to find out.

Three months later Larry was in his kitchen reading the morning paper over

breakfast, and almost spilled his coffee. The thing he had been dreading since he

had first heard about Rick had come true, his worst nightmare. There it was in

black and white, on the front page of the business section: A company he'd never

heard of was announcing the release of a new product that sounded exactly like

the C2Alpha his company had been developing for the past two years.

Through deceit, these people had beaten him to market. His dream was destroyed.

The millions of dollars invested in research and development wasted. And he

probably couldn't prove a single thing against them.

Sammy Sanford's Story

Smart enough to be earning a big salary at a legitimate job, but crooked enough

to prefer making a living as a con man, Sammy Sanford had done very well for

himself. In time he came to the attention of a spy who had been forced into early

retirement because of a drinking problem; bitter and revengeful, the man had

found a way of selling the talents that the government had made him an expert in.

Always on the lookout for people he could use, he had spotted Sammy the first.time they met. Sammy had found it easy, and very profitable, to shift his focus

from lifting people's money to lifting company secrets.

Most people wouldn't have the guts to do what I do. Try to cheat people over the

telephone or over the Internet and nobody ever gets to see you. But any good con

man, the old-fashioned, face-to-face kind (and there are plenty of them still

around, more than you would think) can look you in the eye, tell you a whopper,

and get you to believe it. I've known a prosecutor or two who think that's

criminal. I think it's a talent.

But you can't go walking in blind, you have to size things up first. A street con,

you can take a man's temperature with a little friendly conversation and couple of

carefully worded suggestions. Get the right responses and Bingo!--you've bagged

a pigeon.

A company job is more like what we call a big con. You've got setup to do. Find

out what their buttons are, find out what they want. What they need. Plan an

attack. Be patient, do your homework. Figure out the role you're going to play

and learn your lines. And don't walk in the door until you're ready.

I spent better than three weeks getting up to speed for this one. The client gave

me a two-day session in what I should say "my" company did and how to

describe why it was going to be such a good joint marketing alliance.

Then I got lucky. I called the company and said I was from a venture capital firm

and we were interested in setting up a meeting and I was juggling schedules to

find a time when all of our partners would be available sometime in the next

couple of months, and was there any time slot I should avoid, any period when

Larry wasn't going to be in town? And she said, Yes, he hadn't had any time off

in the two years since they started the company but his wife was dragging him

away on a golf vacation the first week in August.

That was only two weeks away. I could wait.

Meanwhile an industry magazine gave me the name of the firm's PR company. I

said I liked the amount of space they were getting for their robotics company

client and I wanted to talk to whoever was handling that account about handling

my company. It turned out to be an energetic young lady who liked the idea she

might be able to bring in a new account. Over a pricey lunch with one more drink

than she really wanted, she did her best to convince me they were oh, so good at

understanding a client's problems and finding the right PR solutions. I played

hard to convince. I needed some details. With a little prodding, by the time the.plates were being cleared she had told me more about the new product and the

company's problems than I could have hoped for.

The thing went like clockwork. The story about being so embarrassed that the

meeting was next week but I might as well meet the team as long as I'm here, the

receptionist swallowed whole. She even felt sorry for me into the bargain. The

lunch set me back all of $150. With tip. And I had what I needed. Phone

numbers, job titles, and one very key guy who believed I was who I said I was.

Brian had me fooled, I admit. He seemed like the kind of guy who'd just email

me anything I asked for. But he sounded like he was holding back a little when I

brought up the subject. It pays to expect the unexpected. That email account in

Larry's name, I had it in my back pocket just in case. The Yahoo security people

are probably still sitting there waiting for somebody to use the account again so

they can trace him. They'll have a long wait. The fat lady has sung. I'm off on

another project.

Analyzing the Con

Anyone who works a face-to-face con has to cloak himself in a look that will

make him acceptable to the mark. He'll put himself together one way to appear at

the race track, another to appear at a local watering hole, still another for an

upscale bar at a fancy hotel.

It's the same way with industrial espionage. An attack may call for a suit and tie

and an expensive briefcase if the spy is posing as an executive of an established

firm, a consultant, or a sales rep. On another job, trying to pass as a software

engineer, a technical person, or someone from the mail room, the clothes, the

uniform--the whole look would be different.

For infiltrating the company, the man who called himself Rick Daggot knew he

had to project an image of confidence and competence, backed by a thorough

knowledge of the company's product and industry.

Not much difficulty laying his hands on the information he needed in advance.

He devised an easy ruse to find out when the CEO would be away. A small

challenge, but still not very tough, was finding out enough details about the

project that he could sound "on the inside" about what they were doing. Often

this information is known to various company suppliers, as well as investors,

venture capitalists they've approached about raising money, their banker, and

their law firm. The attacker has to take care, though: Finding someone who will

part with insider knowledge can be tricky, but trying two or three sources to turn

up someone who can be squeezed for information runs the risk that people will.catch on to the game. That way lies danger. The Rick Daggots of the world need

to pick carefully and tread each information path only once.

The lunch was another sticky proposition. First there was the problem of

arranging things so he'd have a few minutes alone with each person, out of

earshot of the others. He told Jessica 12:30 but booked the table for 1 P.M., at an

upscale, expense-account type of restaurant. He hoped that would mean they'd

have to have drinks at the bar, which is exactly what happened. A perfect

opportunity to move around and chat with each individual.

Still, there were so many ways that a misstep--a wrong answer or a careless

remark could reveal Rick to be an imposter. Only a supremely confident and wily

industrial spy would dare take a chance of exposing himself that way. But years

of working the streets as a confidence man had built Rick's abilities and given

him the confidence that, even if he made a slip, he'd be able to cover it up well

enough to quiet any suspicions. This was the most challenging, most dangerous

time of the entire operation, and the elation he felt at bringing off a sting like this

made him realize why he didn't have to drive fast cars or skydive or cheat on his

wife--he got plenty of excitement just doing his job. How many people, he

wondered, could say as much?

MITNICK MESSAGE

While most social engineering attacks occur over the telephone or email, don't

assume that a bold attacker will never appear in person at your business. In most

cases, the imposter uses some form of social engineering to gain access to a

building after counterfeiting an employee badge using a commonly available

software program such as Photoshop.

What about the business cards with the phone company test line? The television

show The Rockford Files, which was a series about a private investigator,

illustrated a clever and somewhat humorous technique. Rockford (played by actor

James Garner) had a portable business card printing machine in his car, which he

used to print out a card appropriate to whatever the occasion called for. These

days, a social engineer can get business cards printed in an hour at any copy

store, or print them on a laser printer.

NOTE

John Le Carre, author of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, A Perfect Spy,

and many other remarkable books, grew up as the son of a polished, engaging

lifelong can man. Le Carre was struck as a youngster to discover that, successful

as his father was in deceiving other, he was also gullible, a victim more than once

to another con man or woman. Which just goes to show that everyone is at risk of

being taken in by a social engineer, even another social engineer..What leads a group of smart men and women to accept an imposter? We size up a

situation by both instinct and intellect. If the story adds up-- that's the intellect

part--and a con man manages to project a believable image, we're usually willing

to let down our guard. It's the believable image that separates a successful con

man or social engineer from one who quickly lands behind bars.

Ask yourself: How sure am I that I would never fall for a story like Rick's? If

you're sure you wouldn't, ask yourself whether anyone has ever put anything

over on you. If the answer to this second question is yes, it's probably the correct

answer to the first question, as well.

LEAPFROG

A challenge: The following story does not involve industrial espionage. As you

read it, see if you can understand why I decided to put it in this chapter!

Harry Tardy was back living at home, and he was bitter. The Marine Corps had

seemed like a great escape until he washed out of boot camp. Now he had

returned to the hometown he hated, was taking computer courses at the local

community college," and looking for a way to strike out at the world.

Finally he hit upon a plan. Over beers with a guy in one of his classes, he'd been

complaining about their instructor, a sarcastic know-it-all, and together they

cooked up a wicked scheme to burn the guy: They'd grab the source code for a

popular personal digital assistant (PDA) and have it sent to the instructor's

computer, and make sure to leave a trail so the company would think the

instructor was the bad guy.

The new friend, Karl Alexander, said he "knew a few tricks" and would tell

Harry how to bring this off. Arid get away with it.

Doing Their Homework

A little initial research showed Harry that the product had been engineered at the

Development Center located at the PDA manufacturer's headquarters overseas.

But there was also an R&D facility in the United States. That was good, Karl

pointed out, because for the attempt to work there had to be some company

facility in the United States that also needed access to the source code.

At that point Harry was ready to call the overseas Development Center. Here's

where a plea for sympathy came in, the "Oh, dear, I'm in trouble, I need help,

please, please, help me." Naturally the plea was a little more subtle than that. Karl

wrote out a script, but Harry sounded completely phony trying to read it. In the

end, he practiced with Karl so he could say what he needed to in a conversational

tone..What Harry finally said, with Karl sitting by his side, went something like this:

"I'm calling from R&D Minneapolis. Our server had a worm that infected the

whole department. We had to install the operating system again and then when

we went to restore from backup, none of the backups was any good. Guess who

was supposed to be checking the integrity of the backups? Yours truly. So I'm

getting yelled at by my boss, and management is up in arms that we've lost the

data. Look, I need to have the latest revision of the source-code tree as quick as

you can. I need you to gzip the source code and send it to me."

At this point Karl scribbled him a note, and Harry told the man on the other end

of the phone that he just wanted him to transfer the file internally, to Minneapolis

R&D. This was highly important: When the man on the other end of the phone

was clear that he was just being asked to send the file to another part of the

company, his mind was at ease--what could be wrong with that?

LINGO

GZIP To archive files in a single compressed file using a Linux GNU utility.

He agreed to gzip and send it. Step by step, with Karl at his elbow, Harry talked

the man there through getting started on the procedure for compressing the huge

source code into a single, compact file. He also gave him a file name to use on

the compressed file, "newdata," explaining that this name would avoid any

confusion with their old, corrupted files.

Karl had to explain the next step twice before Harry got it, but it was central to

the little game of leapfrog Karl had dreamed up. Harry was to call R&D

Minneapolis and tell somebody there "I want to send a file to you, and then I

want you to send it somewhere else for me"-of course all dressed up with

reasons that would make it all sound plausible. What confused Harry was this: He

was supposed to say "I'm going to send you a file," when it wasn't going to be

Harry sending the file at all. He had to make the guy he was talking to at the

R&D Center think the file was coming from him, when what the Center was

really going to receive was the file of proprietary source code from Europe. "Why

would I tell him it's coming from me when it's really coming from overseas?"

Harry wanted to know.

"The guy at the R&D Center is the linchpin," Karl explained. "He's got to think

he's just doing a favor for a fellow employee here in the U.S., getting a file from

you and then just forwarding it for you."

Harry finally understood. He called the R&D Center, where he asked the

receptionist to connect him to the Computer Center, where he asked to speak to a

computer operator. A guy came on the line who sounded as young as Harry.himself. Harry greeted him, explained he was calling from the Chicago

fabricating division of the company and that he had this file he'd been trying to

send to one of their partners working on a project with them, but, he said, "We've

got this router problem and can't reach their network. I'd like to transfer the file to

you, and after you receive it, I'll phone you so I can walk you through

transferring it to the partner's computer.

So far, so good. Harry then asked the young man whether his computer center

had an anonymous FTP account, a setup that allows anyone to transfer files in

and out of a directory where no password is required. Yes, an anonymous FTP

was available, and he gave Harry the internal Internet Protocol (IP) address for

reaching it.

LINGO

ANONYMOUS FTP A program that provides access to a remote computer even

though you don't have an account by using the File Transfer protocol (FTP).

Although anonymous FTP can be accessed without a password, generally user-access

rights to certain folders are restricted.

With that information in hand, Harry called back the Development Center

overseas. By now the compressed file was ready, and Harry gave the instructions

for transferring the file to the anonymous FTP site. In less than five minutes, the

compressed source-code file was sent to the kid at the R&D Center.

Setting Up the Victim

Halfway to the goal. Now Harry and Karl had to wait to make sure the file had

arrived before proceeding. During the wait, they walked across the room to the

instructor's desk and took care of two other necessary steps. They first set up an

anonymous FTP server on his machine, which would serve as a destination for

the file in the last leg of their scheme.

The second step provided a solution for an otherwise tricky problem. Clearly they

couldn't tell their man at the R&D Center to send the file to an address such as,

say, warren@rms.ca.edu. The ".edu" domain would be a dead giveaway, since

any half-awake computer guy would recognize it as the address of a school,

immediately blowing the whole operation. To avoid this, they went into Windows

on the instructor's computer and looked up the machine's IP address, which they

would give as the address for sending the file.

By then it was time to call back the computer operator at the R&D Center. Harry

got him on the phone and said, "I just transferred the file that I talked to you

about. Can you check that you received it ".Yes, it had arrived. Harry then asked him to try forwarding it, and gave him the

IP address. He stayed on the phone while the young man made the connection

and started transmitting the file, and they watched with big grins from across the

room as the light on the hard drive of the instructor's computer blinked and

blinked--busy receiving the download.

Harry exchanged a couple of remarks with the guy about how maybe one day

computers and peripherals would be more reliable, thanked him and said

goodbye.

The two copied the file from the instructor's machine onto a pair of Zip disks, one

for each of them, just so they could look at it later, like stealing a painting from a

museum that you can enjoy yourself but don't dare show to your friends. Except,

in this case, it was more like they had taken a duplicate original of the painting,

and the museum still had their own original.

Karl then talked Harry through the steps of removing the FTP server from the

instructor's machine, and erasing the audit trail so there would be no evidence of

what they had done--only the stolen file, left where it could be located easily.

As a final step, they posted a section of the source code on Usenet directly from

the instructor's computer. Only a section, so they wouldn't do any great damage

to the company, but leaving clear tracks directly back to the instructor. He would

have some difficult explaining to do.

Analyzing the Con

Although it took the combination of a number of elements to make this escapade

work, it could not have succeeded without some skill-ful playacting of an appeal

for sympathy and help: I'm getting yelled at by my boss, and management is up in

arms, and so on. That, combined with a pointed explanation of how the man on

the other end of the phone could help solve the problem, proved to be a

powerfully convincing con. It worked here, and has worked many other times.

The second crucial element: The man who understood the value of the file was

asked to send it to an address within the company.

And the third piece of the puzzle: The computer operator could see that the file

had been transferred to him from within the company. That could only mean--or

so it seemed--that the man who sent it to him could himself have sent it on to the

final destination if only his external network connection had been working. What

could possibly be wrong with helping him out by sending it for him?.But what about having the compressed file assigned a different name? Seemingly

a small item, but an important one. The attacker couldn't afford taking a chance

of the file arriving with a name identifying it as source code, or a name related to

the product. A request to send a file with a name like that outside the company

might have set off alarm bells. Having the file re-labeled with an innocuous name

was crucial. As worked out by the attackers, the second young man had no

qualms about sending the file outside the company; a file with a name like new

data, giving no clue as to the true nature of the information, would hardly make

him suspicious.

MITNICK MESSGAE

The underlying rule that every employee should have firmly planted in his or her

brain: Except with management approval, don't transfer files to people you don't

personally know, even if the destination appears to be within your company's

internal network.

Finally, did you figure out what this story is doing in a chapter on industrial

espionage? If not, here's the answer: What these two students did as a malicious

prank could just as easily have been done by a professional industrial spy,

perhaps in the pay of a competitor, or perhaps in the pay of a foreign government.

Either way, the damage could have been devastating to the company, severely

eroding the sales of their new product once the competitive product reached the

market.

How easily could the same type of attack be carried out against your company?

PREVENTING THE CON

Industrial espionage, which has long been a challenge to businesses, has now

become the bread and butter of traditional spies who have focused their efforts on

obtaining company secrets for a price, now that the Cold War has ended. Foreign

governments and corporations are now using freelance industrial spies to steal

information. Domestic companies also hire information brokers who cross the

line in their efforts to obtain competitive intelligence. In many cases these are

former military spies turned industrial information brokers who have the

prerequisite knowledge and experience to easily exploit organizations, especially

those that have failed to deploy safeguards to protect their information and

educate their people.

Safety Off-Site

What could have helped the company that ran into problems with their off-site

storage facility? The danger here could have been avoided if the company had

been encrypting their data. Yes, encryption requires extra time and expense, but.it's well worth the effort. Encrypted files need to be spot-checked regularly to be

sure that the encryption/decryption is working smoothly.

There's always the danger that the encryption keys will be lost or that the only

person who knows the keys will be hit by a bus. But the nuisance level can be

minimized, and anyone who stores sensitive information off-site with a

commercial firm and does not use encryption is, excuse me for being blunt, an

idiot. It's like walking down the street in a bad neighborhood with twenty-dollar

bills sticking out of your pockets, essentially asking to be robbed.

Leaving backup media where someone could walk off with it is a common flaw

in security. Several years ago, I was employed at a firm that could have made

better efforts to protect client information. The operation's staff left the firm's

backup tapes outside the locked computer room door for a messenger to pick up

each day. Anyone could have walked off with the backup tapes, which contained

all of the firm's word-processed documents in unencrypted text. If backup data is

encrypted, loss of the material is a nuisance; if it's not encrypted--well, you can

envision the impact on your company better than I can.

The need in larger companies for reliable offsite storage is pretty much a given.

But your company's security procedures need to include an investigation of your

storage company to see how conscientious they are about their own security

policies and practices. If they're not as dedicated as your own company, all your

security efforts could be undermined.

Smaller companies have a good alternate choice for backup: Send the new and

changed files each night to one of the companies offering online storage. Again,

it's essential that the data be encrypted. Otherwise, the information is available

not just to a bent employee at the storage company but to every computer intruder

who can breach the on-line storage companys computer systems or network.

And of course, when you set up an encryption system to protect the security of

your backup files, you must also set up a highly secure procedure for storing the

encryption keys or the pass phrases that unlock them. Secret keys used to encrypt

data should be stored in a safe or vault. Standard company practice needs to

provide for the possibility that the employee handling this data could suddenly

leave, die, or take another job. There must always be at least two people who

know the storage place and the encryption/decryption procedures, as well as the

policies for how and when keys are to be changed. The policies must also require

that encryption keys be changed immediately upon the departure of any

employee who had access to them..Who Is That?

The example in this chapter of a slick con artist who uses charm to get employees

to share information reinforces the importance of verification of identity. The

request to have source code forwarded to an FTP site also points to the

importance of knowing your requester.

In Chapter 16 you will find specific policies for verifying the identity of any

stranger who makes a request for information or a request that some action be

taken. We've talked about the need for verification throughout the book; in

Chapter 16 you'll get specifics of how this should be done..Part 4

Raising the bar.Chapter 15

Information Security Awareness and Training

A social engineer has been given the assignment of obtaining the plans to your

hot new product due for release in two months.

What's going to stop him?

Your firewall? No.

Strong authentication devices? No. Intrusion detection systems? No. Encryption?

No.

Limited access to phone numbers for dial-up modems? No.

Code names for servers that make it difficult for an outsider to determine which

server might contain the product plans? No.

The truth is that there is no technology in the world that can prevent a social

engineering attack.

SECURITY THROUGH TECHNOLOGY, TRAINING, AND

PROCEDURES

Companies that conduct security penetration tests report that their attempts to

break into client company computer systems by social engineering methods are

nearly 100 percent successful. Security technologies can make these types of

attacks more difficult by removing people from the decision-making process.

However the only truly effective way to mitigate the threat of social engineering

is through the use of security technologies combined with security policies that

set ground rules for employee behavior, and appropriate education and training

for employees.

There is only one way to keep your product plans safe and that is by having a

trained, aware, and a conscientious workforce. This involves training on the

policies and procedures, but also--and probably even more important--an ongoing

awareness program. Some authorities recommend that 40 percent of a company's

overall security budget be targeted to awareness training.

The first step is to make everyone in the enterprise aware that unscrupulous

people exist who will use deception to psychologically manipulate them.

Employees must be educated about what information needs to be protected, and.how to protect it. Once people have a better understanding of how they can be

manipulated, they are in a far better position to recognize that an attack is

underway.

Security awareness also means educating everyone in the enterprise on the

company's security policies and procedures. As discussed in Chapter 17, policies

are necessary rules to guide employee behavior to protect corporate information

systems and sensitive information.

This chapter and the next one provide a security blueprint that could save you

from costly attacks. If you don't have trained and alert employees following well-thought-

out procedures, it's not a matter of if, but when you will lose valuable

information to a social engineer. Don't wait for an attack to happen to you before

instituting these policies: It could be devastating to your business and to your

employees' welfare.

UNDERSTANDING HOW ATTACKERS TAKE ADVANTAGE OF

HUMAN NATURE

To develop a successful training program, you have to understand why people are

vulnerable to attacks in the first place. By identifying these tendencies in your

training--for example, by drawing attention to them in role-playing discussions--you

can help your employees to understand why we can all be manipulated by

social engineers.

Manipulation has been studied by social scientists for at least fifty years. Robert

B. Cialdini, writing in Scientific American (February 2001), summarized this

research, presenting six "basic tendencies of human nature" that are involved in

an attempt to obtain compliance to a request.

These six tendencies are those that social engineers rely on (consciously or, most

often, unconsciously) in their attempts to manipulate.

Authority

People have a tendency to comply when a request is made by a person in

authority. As discussed elsewhere in these pages, a person can be convinced to

comply with a request if he or she believes the requestor is a person in authority

or a person who is authorized to make such a request.

In his book Influence, Dr. Cialdini writes of a study at three Midwestern

hospitals in which twenty-two separate nurses' stations were contacted by a caller

who claimed to be a hospital physician, and given instructions for administering a

prescription drug to a patient on the ward. The nurses who received these

instructions did not know the caller. They did not even know whether he was.really a doctor (he was not). They received the instructions for the prescription by

telephone, which was a violation of hospital policy. The drug they were told to

administer was not authorized for use on the wards, and the dosage they were told

to administer was twice the maximum daily dosage, and thus could have

endangered the life of the patient. Yet in 95 percent of the cases, Cialdini

reported, "the nurse proceeded to obtain the necessary dosage from the ward

medicine cabinet and was on her way to administer it to the patient" before being

intercepted by an observer and told of the experiment.

Examples of attacks: A social engineer attempts to cloak himself in the mantle

of authority by claiming that he is with the IT department, or that he is an

executive or works for an executive in the company.

Liking

People have the tendency to comply when the person making a request has been

able to establish himself as likable, or as having similar interests, beliefs, and

attitudes as the victim.

Examples of attacks: Through conversation, the attacker manages to learn a

hobby or interest of the victim, and claims an interest and enthusiasm for the

same hobby or interest. Or he may claim to be from the same state or school, or

to have similar goals. The social engineer will also attempt to mimic the

behaviors of his target to create the appearance of similarity.

Reciprocation

We may automatically comply with a request when we have been given or

promised something of value. The gift may be a material item, or advice, or help.

When someone has done something for you, you feel an inclination to

reciprocate. This strong tendency to reciprocate exists even in situations where

the person receiving the gift hasn't asked for it. One of the most effective ways to

influence people to do us a "favor" (comply with a request) is by giving some gift

r assistance that forms an underlying obligation.

Members of the Hare Krishna religious cult were very effective at influencing

people to donate to their cause by first giving them a book or flower as a gift. If

the recipient tried to return the gift, the giver would refuse remarking, "It's our

gift to you." This behavioral principle of reciprocation was used by the Krishnas

to substantially increase donations.

Examples of attacks: An employee receives a call from a person who identifies

himself as being from the IT department. The caller explains that some company

computers have been infected with a new virus not recognized by the antivirus

software that can destroy all files on a computer, and offers to talk the person

through some steps to prevent problems. Following this, the caller asks the.person to test a software utility that has just been recently upgraded for allowing

users to change passwords. The employee is reluctant to refuse, because the caller

has just provided help that will supposedly protect the user from a virus. He

reciprocates by complying with the caller's request.

Consistency

People have the tendency to comply after having made a public commitment or

endorsement for a cause. Once we have promised we will do something, we don't

want to appear untrustworthy or undesirable and will tend to follow through in

order to be consistent with our statement or promise.

Example of attack: The attacker contacts a relatively new employee and advises

her of the agreement to abide by certain security policies and procedures as a

condition of being allowed to use company information systems. After discussing

a few security practices, the caller asks the user for her password "to verify

compliance" with policy on choosing a difficult-to-guess password. Once the user

reveals her password, the caller makes a recommendation to construct future

passwords in such a way that the attacker will be able to guess it. The victim

complies because of her prior agreement to abide by company policies and her

assumption that the caller is merely verifying her compliance.

Social Validation

People have the tendency to comply when doing so appears to be in line with

what others are doing. The action of others is accepted as validation that the

behavior in question is the correct and appropriate action.

Examples of attacks: The caller says he is conducting a survey and names other

people in the department who he claims have already cooperated with him. The

victim, believing that cooperation by others validates the authenticity of the

request, agrees to take part. The caller then asks a series of questions, among

which are questions that draw the victim into revealing his computer username

and password.

Scarcity

People have the tendency to comply when it is believed that the object sought is

in short supply and others are competing for it, or that it is available only for a

short period of time.

Example of attack: The attacker sends emails claiming that the first 500 people

to register at the company's new Web site will win free tickets to a hot new

movie. When an unsuspecting employee registers at the site, he is asked to.provide his company email address and to choose a password. Many people,

motivated by convenience, have the propensity to use the same or a similar

password on every computer system they use. Taking advantage of this, the

attacker then attempts to compromise the target's work and home computer

systems with the username and password that have been entered during the Web

site registration process.

CREATING TRAINING AND AWARENESS PROGRAMS

Issuing an information security policy pamphlet or directing employees to an

intranet page that details security policies will not, by itself, mitigate your risk.

Every business must not only define the rules with written policies, but must

make the extra effort to direct everyone who works with corporate information or

computer systems to learn and follow the rules. Furthermore, you must ensure

that everyone understands the reason behind each policy so that people don't

circumvent the rule as a matter of convenience. Otherwise, ignorance will always

be the worker's excuse, and the precise vulnerability that social engineers will

exploit.

The central goal of any security awareness program is to influence people to

change their behavior and attitudes by motivating every employee to want to

chip in and do his part to protect the organization's information assets. A great

motivator in this instance is to explain how their participation will benefit not just

the company, but the individual employees as well. Since the company retains

certain private information about every worker, when employees do their part to

protect information or information systems, they are actually protecting their own

information, too.

A security training program requires substantial support. The training effort needs

to reach every person who has access to sensitive information or corporate

computer systems, must be on-going, and must be continuously revised to update

personnel on new threats and vulnerabilities. Employees must see that senior

management is fully committed to the program. That commitment must be real,

not just a rubber-stamped "We give our blessings" memo. And the program must

be backed up with sufficient resources to develop, communicate, test it, and to

measure success.

Goals

The basic guideline that should be kept in mind during development of an

information security training and awareness program is that the program needs to

focus on creating in all employees an awareness that their company might be

under attack at any time. They must learn that each employee plays a role in

defending against any attempt to gain entry to computer systems or to steal

sensitive data..Because many aspects of information security involve technology, it's too easy

for employees to think that the problem is being handled by firewalls and other

security technologies. A primary goal of training should be to create awareness in

each employee that they are the front line needed to protect the overall security of

the organization.

Security training must have a significantly greater aim than simply imparting

rules. The training program designer must recognize the strong temptation on the

part of employees, under pressure of getting their jobs done, to overlook or ignore

their security responsibilities. Knowledge about the tactics of social engineering

and how to defend against the attacks is important, but it will only be of value if

the training is designed to focus heavily on motivating employees to use the

knowledge.

The company can count the program as meeting its bottom-line goal if everyone

completing the training is thoroughly convinced and motivated by one basic

notion: that information security is part of his or her job.

Employees must come to appreciate and accept that the threat of social

engineering attacks is real, and that a serious loss of sensitive corporate

information could endanger the company as well as their own personal

information and jobs. In a sense, being careless about information security at

work is equivalent to being careless with one's ATM PIN or credit card number.

This can be a compelling analogy for building enthusiasm for security practices.

Establishing the Training and Awareness Program

The person responsible for designing the information security program needs to

recognize that this is not a one-size-fits-all project. Rather, the training needs to

be developed to suit the specific requirements of several different groups within

the enterprise. While many of the security policies outlined in Chapter 16 apply

to all employees across the board, many others are unique. At a minimum, most

companies will need training programs tailored to these distinct groups:

managers; IT personnel; computer users; non-technical personnel; administrative

assistants; receptionists; and security guards. (See the breakdown of policies by

job assignment in Chapter 16.)

Since the personnel of a company's industrial security force are not ordinarily

expected to be computer proficient, and, except perhaps in a very limited way, do

not come into contact with company computers, they are not usually considered

when designing training of this kind. However, social engineers can deceive

security guards or others into allowing them into a building or office, or into

performing an action that results in a computer intrusion. While members of the

guard force certainly don't need the full training of personnel who operate or use.computers, nonetheless they must not be overlooked in the security awareness

program.

Within the corporate world there are probably few subjects about which all

employees need to be educated that are simultaneously as important and as

inherently dull as security. The best designed information security training

programs must both inform and capture the attention and enthusiasm of the

learners.

The aim should be to make security information awareness and training an

engaging and interactive experience. Techniques could include demonstrating

social engineering methods through role-playing; reviewing media reports of

recent attacks on other less fortunate businesses and discussing the ways the

companies could have prevented the loss; or showing a security video that's

entertaining and educational at the same time. There are several security

awareness companies that market videos and related materials.

NOTE

For those businesses that do not have the resources to develop a program in-house,

there are several training companies that offer security awareness training

services. Trade shows such as Secure World Expo (www.secureworldexpo.com)

are gathering places for these companies

The stories in this book provide plenty of material to explain the methods and

tactics of social engineering, to raise awareness of the threat, and to demonstrate

the vulnerabilities in human behavior. Consider using their scenarios as a basis

for role-playing activities. The stories also offer colorful opportunities for lively

discussion on how the victims could have responded differently to prevent the

attacks from being successful.

A skillful course developer and skillful trainers will find plenty of challenges, but

also plenty of opportunities, for keeping the classroom time lively, and, in the

process, motivate people to become part of the solution.

Structure of the Training

A basic security awareness training program should be developed that all

employees are required to attend. New employees should be required to attend

the training as part of their initial indoctrination. I recommend that no employee

be provided computer access until he has attended a basic security awareness

session..For this initial awareness and training, I suggest a session focused enough to hold

attention, and short enough that the important messages will be remembered.

While the amount of material to be covered certainly justifies longer training, the

importance of providing awareness and motivation along with a reasonable

number of essential messages in my view outweighs any notion of half-day or

full-day sessions that leave people numb with too much information.

The emphasis of these sessions should be on conveying an appreciation of the

harm that can be done to the company, and to employees individually, unless all

employees follow good security work habits. More important than learning about

specific security practices is the motivation that leads employees to accept

personal responsibility for security.

In situations where some employees cannot readily attend classroom sessions, the

company should consider developing awareness training using other forms of

instruction, such as videos, computer-based training, online courses, or written

materials.

After the initial short training session, longer sessions should be designed to

educate employees about specific vulnerabilities and attack techniques relative to

their position in the company. Refresher training should be required at least once

a year. The nature of the threat and the methods used to exploit people are ever-changing,

so the content of the program should be kept up to date. Moreover,

people's awareness and alertness diminish over time, so training must be repeated

at reasonable intervals to reinforce security principles. Here again the emphasis

needs to be as much on keeping employees convinced of the importance of

security policies and motivated to adhere to them, as on exposing specific threats

and social engineering methods.

Managers must allow reasonable time for their subordinates to become familiar

with security policies and procedures, and to participate in the security awareness

program. Employees should not be expected to study security policies or attend

security classes on their own time. New employees should be given ample time to

review security policies and published security practices prior to beginning their

job responsibilities.

Employees who change positions within the organization to a job that involves

access to sensitive information or computer systems should, of course, be

required to complete a security training program tailored to their new

responsibilities. For example, when a computer operator becomes a systems

administrator, or a receptionist becomes an administrative assistant, new training

is required..Training Course Contents

When reduced to their fundamentals, all social engineering attacks have the same

common element: deception. The victim is led to believe that the attacker is a

fellow employee or some other person who is authorized to access sensitive

information, or authorized to give the victim instructions that involve taking

actions with a computer or computer-related equipment. Almost all of these

attacks could be foiled if the targeted employee simply follows two steps:

Verify the identity of the person making the request: Is the person making the

request really who he claims to be?

Verify whether the person is authorized: Does the person have the need to know,

or is he otherwise authorized to make this request?

NOTE

Because security awareness and training are never perfect, use security

technologies whenever possible to create a system of defense in depth. This

means that the security measure is provided by the technology rather than by

individual employees, for example, when the operating system is configured to

prevent employees from downloading software from the Internet, or choosing a

short, easily guessed password.

If awareness training sessions could change behavior so that each employee

would always be consistent about testing any request against these criteria, the

risk associated with social engineering attacks would be dramatically reduced.

A practical information security awareness and training program that addresses

human behavior and social engineering aspects should include the following:

A description of how attackers use social engineering skills to deceive people.

The methods used by social engineers to accomplish their objectives.

How to recognize a possible social engineering attack.

The procedure for handling a suspicious request.

Where to report social engineering attempts or successful attacks.

The importance of challenging anyone who makes a suspicious request,

regardless of the person's claimed position or importance..The fact that they should not implicitly trust others without proper verification,

even though their impulse is to give others the benefit of the doubt.

The importance of verifying the identity and authority of any person making a

request for information or action. (See "Verification and Authorization

Procedures," Chapter 16, for ways to verify identity.)

Procedures for protecting sensitive information, including familiarity with any

data classification system.

The location of the company's security policies and procedures, and their

importance to the protection of information and corporate information systems.

A summary of key security policies and an explanation of their meaning. For

example, every employee should be instructed in how to devise a difficult-to-guess

password.

The obligation of every employee to comply with the policies, and the

consequences for non-compliance.

Social engineering by definition involves some kind of human interaction. An

attacker will very frequently use a variety of communication methods and

technologies in attempting to achieve his or her goal. For this reason, a well-rounded

awareness program should attempt to cover some or all of the following:

Security policies related to computer and voice mail passwords.

The procedure for disclosing sensitive information or materials.

Email usage policy, including the safeguards to prevent malicious code attacks

including viruses, worms, and Trojan Horses.

Physical security requirements such as wearing a badge.

The responsibility to challenge people on the premises who aren't wearing a

badge.

Best security practices of voice mail usage.

How to determine the classification of information, and the proper safeguards for

protecting sensitive information..Proper disposal of sensitive documents and computer media that contain, or have

at any time in the past contained, confidential materials.

Also, if the company plans to use penetration testing to determine the

effectiveness of defenses against social engineering attacks, a warning should be

given putting employees on notice of this practice. Let employees know that at

some time they may receive a phone call or other communication using an

attacker's techniques as part of such a test. Use the results of those tests not to

punish, bur to define the need for additional training in some areas.

Details concerning all of the above items will be found in Chapter 16.

TESTING

Your company may want to test employees on their mastery of the information

presented in the security awareness training, before allowing computer system

access. If you design tests to be given on line, many assessment design software

programs allow you to readily analyze test results to determine areas of the

training that need to be strengthened.

Your company may also consider providing a certificate testifying to the

completion of the security training as a reward and employee motivator.

As a routine part of completing the program, it is recommended that each

employee be asked to sign an agreement to abide by the security policies and

principles taught in the program. Research suggests that a person who makes the

commitment of signing such an agreement is more likely to make an effort to

abide by the procedures.

ONGOING AWARENESS

Most people are aware that learning, even about important matters, tends to fade

unless reinforced periodically. Because of the importance of keeping employees

up to speed on the subject of defending against social engineering attacks, an

ongoing awareness program is vital.

One method to keep security at the forefront of employee thinking is to make

information security a specific job responsibility for every person in the

enterprise. This encourages employees to recognize their crucial role in the

overall security of the company. Otherwise there is a strong tendency to feel that

security "is not my job."

While overall responsibility for an information security program is normally

assigned to a person in the security department or the information technology.department, development of an information security awareness program is

probably best structured as a joint project with the training department.

The ongoing awareness program needs to be creative and use every available

channel for communicating security messages in ways that are memorable so that

employees are constantly reminded about good security habits. Methods should

use all of the traditional channels, plus as many non-traditional ones as the people

assigned to develop and implement the program can imagine. As with traditional

advertising, humor and cleverness help. Varying the wording of messages keeps

them from becoming so familiar that they are ignored.

The list of possibilities for an ongoing awareness program might include:

Providing copies of this book to all employees.

Including informational items in the company newsletter: articles, boxed

reminders (preferably short, attention-getting items), or cartoons, for example.

Posting a picture of the Security Employee of the Month.

Hanging posters in employee areas.

Posting bulletin-board notices.

Providing printed enclosures in paycheck envelopes.

Sending email reminders.

Using security-related screen savers.

Broadcasting security reminder announcements through the voice mail system.

Printing phone stickers with messages such as "Is your caller who he says he is?'!

Setting up reminder messages to appear on the computer when logging in, such

as "If you are sending confidential information in an email, encrypt it."

Including security awareness as a standard item on employee performance reports

and annual reviews.

Providing security awareness reminders on the intranet, perhaps using cartoons or

humor, or in some other way enticing employees to read them..Using an electronic message display board in the cafeteria, with a frequently

changing security reminder.

Distributing flyers or brochures.

And think gimmicks, such as free fortune cookies in the cafeteria, each

containing a security reminder instead of a fortune.

The threat is constant; the reminders must be constant as well.

WHAT'S IN IT FOR ME?"

In addition to security awareness and training programs, I strongly recommend an

active and well-publicized reward program. You must acknowledge employees

who have detected and prevented an attempted social engineering attack, or in

some other way significantly contributed to the success of the information

security program. The existence of the reward program should be made known to

employees at all security awareness sessions, and security violations should be

widely publicized throughout the organization.

On the other side of the coin, people must be made aware of the consequences of

failing to abide by information security policies, whether through carelessness or

resistance. Though we all make mistakes, repeated violations of security

procedures must not be tolerated..Chapter 16

Recommended Corporate Information Security Policies

Nine out of every ten large corporations and government agencies have been

attacked by computer intruders, to judge from the results of a survey conducted

by the FBI and reported by the Associated Press in April 2002. Interestingly, the

study found that only about one company in three reported or publicly

acknowledged any attacks. That reticence to reveal their victimization makes

sense. To avoid loss of customer confidence and to prevent further attacks by

intruders who learn that a company may be vulnerable, most businesses do not

publicly report computer security incidents.

It appears that there are no statistics on social engineering attacks, and if there

were, the numbers would be highly unreliable; in most cases a company never

knows when a social engineer has "stolen" information, so many attacks go

unnoticed and unreported.

Effective countermeasures can be put into place against most types of social

engineering attacks. But let's face reality here--unless everyone in the enterprise

understands that security is important and makes it his or her business to know

and adhere to a company's security policies, social engineering attacks will

always present a grave risk to the enterprise.

In fact, as improvements are made if I the technological weapons against security

breaches, the social engineering approach to using people to access proprietary

company information or penetrate the corporate network will almost certainly

become significantly more frequent and attractive to information thieves. An

industrial spy will naturally attempt to accomplish his or her objective using the

easiest method and the one involving the least risk of detection. As a matter of

fact, a company that has protected its computer systems and network by

deploying state-of the-art security technologies may thereafter be at more risk

from attackers who use social engineering strategies, methods, and tactics to

accomplish their objectives.

This chapter presents specific policies designed to minimize a company's risk

with respect to social engineering attacks. The policies address attacks that are

based not strictly on exploiting technical vulnerabilities. They involve using some

kind of pretext or ruse to deceive a trusted employee into providing information

or performing an action that gives the perpetrator access to sensitive business

information or to enterprise computer systems and networks..WHAT IS A SECURITY POLICY?

Security policies are clear instructions that provide the guidelines for employee

behavior for safeguarding information, and are a fundamental building block in

developing effective controls to counter potential security threats. These policies

are even more significant when it comes to preventing and detecting social

engineering attacks.

Effective security controls are implemented by training employees with well-documented

policies and procedures. However, it is important to note that

security policies, even if religiously followed by all employees, are not

guaranteed to prevent every social engineering attack. Rather, the reasonable goal

is always to mitigate the risk to an acceptable level.

The policies presented here include measures that, while not strictly focused on

social engineering issues, nonetheless belong here because they deal with

techniques commonly used in social engineering attacks. For example, policies

about opening email attachments--which could install malicious Trojan Horse

software allowing the attacker to take over the victim's computer--address a

method frequently used by computer intruders.

Steps to Developing a Program

A comprehensive information security program usually starts with a risk

assessment aimed at determining:

What enterprise information assets need to be protected?

What specific threats exist against these assets?

What damage would be caused to the enterprise if these potential threats were to

materialize?

The primary goal of risk assessment is to prioritize which information assets are

in need of immediate safeguards, and whether instituting safeguards will be cost-effective

based on a cost-benefit analysis. Simply put, what assets are going to be

protected first, and how much money should be spent to protect these assets?

It's essential that senior management buy into and strongly support the necessity

of developing security policies and an information security program. As with any

other corporate program, if a security program is to succeed, management must

do more than merely provide an endorsement, it must demonstrate a commitment

by personal example. Employees need to be aware that management strongly

subscribes to the belief that information security is vital to the company's.operation, that protection of company business information is essential for the

company to remain in business, and that every employee's job may depend on the

success of the program.

The person assigned to draft information security policies needs to understand

that the policies should be written in a style free of technical jargon and readily

understood by the non-technical employee. It's also important that the document

make clear why each policy is important; otherwise employees may disregard

some policies as a waste of time. The policy writer should create a document that

presents the policies, and a separate document for procedures, because policies

will probably change much less frequently than the specific procedures used to

implement them.

In addition, the policy writer should be aware of ways in which security

technologies can be used to enforce good information security practices. For

example, most operating systems make it possible to require that user passwords

conform to certain specifications such as length. In some companies, a policy

prohibiting users from downloading programs can be controlled via local or

global policy settings within the operating system. The policies should require

use of security technology whenever cost-effective to remove human-based

decision-making.

Employees must be advised of the consequences for failing to comply with

security policies and procedures. A set of appropriate consequences for violating

the policies should be developed and widely publicized. Also, a reward program

should be created for employees who demonstrate good security practices or who

recognize and report a security incident. Whenever an employee is rewarded for

foiling a security breach, it should be widely publicized throughout the company,

for example in an article in the company newsletter.

One goal of a security awareness program is to communicate the importance of

security policies and the harm that can result from failure to follow such rules.

Given human nature, employees will, at times, ignore or circumvent policies that

appear unjustified or too time-consuming. It is a management responsibility to

insure that employees understand the importance of the policies and are

motivated to comply, rather than treating them as obstacles to be circumvented.

It's important to note that information security policies cannot be written in stone.

As business needs change, as new security technologies come to market, and as

security vulnerabilities evolve, the policies need to be modified or supplemented.

A process for regular review and updating should be put into place. Make the

corporate security policies and procedures available via the corporate intranet or

maintain such policies in a publicly available folder. This increases the likelihood.that such policies and procedures will be reviewed more frequently, and provides

a convenient method for employees to quickly find the answer to any

information-security related question.

Finally, periodic penetration tests and vulnerability assessments using social

engineering methods and tactics should be conducted to expose any weakness in

training or lack of adherence to company policies and procedures. Prior to using

any deceptive penetration-testing tactics, employees should be put on notice that

such testing may occur from time to time.

How to Use These Policies

The detailed policies presented in this chapter represent only a subset of the

information security policies I believe are necessary to mitigate all security risks.

Accordingly, the policies included here should not be considered as a

comprehensive list of information security policies. Rather, they are the basis for

building a comprehensive body of security policies appropriate to the specific

needs of your company.

Policy writers for an organization will have to choose the policies that are

appropriate based on their company's unique environment and business goals.

Each organization, having different security requirements based on business

needs, legal requirements, organizational culture, and the information systems

used by the company, will take what it needs from the policies presented, and

omit the rest.

There are also choices to be made about how stringent policies will be in each

category. A smaller company located in a single facility where most employees

know one another does not need to be much concerned about an attacker calling

on the phone and pretending to be an employee (although of course an imposter

may masquerade as a vendor). Also, despite the increased risks, a company

framed around a casual, relaxed corporate culture may wish to adopt only a

limited subset of recommended policies to meet its security objectives.

DATA CLASSIFICATION

A data classification policy is fundamental to protecting an organization's

information assets, and sets up categories for governing the release of sensitive

information. This policy provides a framework for protecting corporate

information by making all employees aware of the level of sensitivity of each

piece of information.

Operating without a data classification policy--the status quo in almost all

companies today--leaves most of these decisions in the hands of individual.workers. Naturally, employee decisions are largely based on subjective factors,

rather than on the sensitivity, criticality, and value of information. Information is

also released because employees are ignorant of the possibility that in responding

to a request for the information, they may be putting it into the hands of an

attacker.

The data classification policy sets forth guidelines for classifying valuable

information into one of several levels. With each item assigned a classification,

employees can follow a set of data-handling procedures that protect the company

from inadvertent or careless release of sensitive information. These procedures

mitigate the possibility that employees will be duped into revealing sensitive

information to unauthorized persons.

Every employee must be trained on the corporate data classification policy,

including those who do not typically use computers or corporate communications

systems. Because every member of the corporate workforce--including the

cleaning crew, building guards, and copy-room staff, as well as consultants,

contractors, and even interns--may have access to sensitive information, anyone

could be the target of an attack.

Management must assign an Information Owner to be responsible for any

information that is currently in use at the company. Among other things, the

Information Owner is responsible for the protection of the information assets.

Ordinarily, the Owner decides what level of classification to assign based on the

need to protect the information, periodically reassesses the classification level

assigned, and decides if any changes are needed. The Information Owner may

also delegate the responsibility of protecting the data to a Custodian or Designee.

Classification Categories. and Definitions

Information should be separated into varying levels of classification based on its

sensitivity. Once a particular classification system is set up, it's an expensive and

time-consuming process to reclassify information into new categories. In our

example policy I chose four classification levels, which is appropriate for most

medium-to-large businesses. Depending on the number and types of sensitive

information, business may choose to add more categories to further control

specific types of information. In smaller businesses, a three-level classification

scheme may be sufficient. Remember--the more complex the classification

scheme, the more expense to the organization in training employees and

enforcing the system.

Confidential. This category of information is the most sensitive. Confidential

information is intended for use only within the organization. In most cases, it

should only be shared with a very limited number of people with an absolute.need to know. The nature of Confidential information is such that any

unauthorized disclosure could seriously impact the company, its shareholders, its

business partners, and/or its customers. Items of Confidential information