INTO THE CRIMINAL’S MIND
It’s ideal to say understanding the basics of how a criminal’s mind works is crucial to avoid being phished or scammed in whatever form.
If you read my previous post, I mentioned that I had been scammed a few times and I’ll share one of the experiences here.
So at some point in my life, I ventured into making accessories with African prints because I thought they were amazing and my love for African prints was 10 on a scale of 10. Apparently, I had to be unique because there were tons of other people with the same interests and super creative at it. In a search for creating the unique I found this amazing fabric store on instagram, they had super unique prints I hadn’t even seen anywhere and the reviews in the comment section was so amazing, the followership was massive and I felt why not?
I sent a direct message to the ‘vendor’ asked for prices and he/she had the sweetest replies ever, so calm and endearing. The end of the story was tears, hot premium tears.
I scrolled up the chats days later and apparently there were too many red flags I ignored. (I still think I was jazzed).
In the 21st century a higher percentage of Cyber criminals exploit human psychology rather than hacking techniques. How do you spot the signs early!
Social engineering is the art of exploiting human psychology to gain access to data. For instance, a social engineer might call a Bank customer and pose as a Bank Officer to try tricking the customer into divulging his password.
It sometimes doesn’t matter how conscious you are of your data security, a crafty social engineer can chisel his way right through. A social engineering attack works so well over e-mail, the phone, or social media, the type of things these attackers need to their advantage is your greed, fear, curiosity, breaking news events, holidays and sometimes even your desire to help others. Basically, devices to lure their victims, they know the human emotions and its reactions at each point in time.
INTO THE CRIMINALS MIND
THE SWEET OFFER
I’ve seen a lot of “THE NIGERIAN PRINCE SCAMS” videos on yotube and if you have you’d see that the easiest way to scam a person is to exploit their greed. Offer something too sweet to be true, this is the foundation of a classic scam. The Nigerian Prince emails have been on for decades and often times they are just too good to be true offers.
THE FAKE IT TILL YOU MAKE IT
In this mind, the attackers pretend to be your victim. This usually occurs when they act like a person in need, asking for some amount of money to help unlock some sort of treasure they’ll paint to draw in your pity. In 2005, Helwett Packard hired private investigators to find out which HP board members were leaking info to the press, they were able to supply the Private investigators with the last four digits of their targets’ social security number which AT&T’S tech support accepted as proof of ID before handing over detailed call logs. This is the Ideal!
BE IN CHARGE
Most persons are conditioned to respect authority. So an attacker would act like he is in a position to e privy to certain information because half the times, it is external authorities whose demands we comply with not thinking twice. Hilary Clinton campaign honcho john pedestal had his email hacked y Russian spies in 2016 when they sent him a phishing email disguised as a note from Google asking him to reset his password. He actually gave his password away!
So now you have peeped into a cyber criminal’s mind, you maybe have figured out ways to recognize a few scams when you see them. How about defending yourself from an attack?!
Stop by to learn more next time!
TIPS ON DEFENDING YOURSELF FROM SOCIAL ENGINEERING ATTACKS comes up next!
