Friday, November 23, 2007
Chapter 7
You do not get something for nothing. I could not agree more with Mitnick’s comment on page 97. Mankind has invented so many things to improve our lives. This improvement comes with a high price to pay. These conveniences have brought on more and more ways to penetrate our safety. Though time can be saved through technology viruses will drain that precious time we accumulate. Not to mention the stress from going through a virus can take away minutes of my life that I will never get back. Last month I got a virus on my laptop from trying to close a pop-up with the usual X box in the right corner of the advertisement. Little did I know that those social engineers would disguise that X box as an agreement to open a virus. Now, I am forced to call for help. I was on the phone with a Dell tech help person from India for 2 hours. I ended up buying the two hundred dollar support package and wasted two precious hours of my life. This brings me to another point. How can I know for certain that the person I called was from Dell? A clever social engineer could patch calls going to the Dell help line and send them directly into the lion’s den. They could also set up lines that are only one number off from the actual number and wait for ‘wrong numbers’ and then attack them.
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4 comments:
I've actually thought a lot about that quote from Mitnick. We develop all these things to make things better, but all it really does is make us that much more vulnerable. In the old times of paper money, you either had your cash or you didn't. Now people can steal it through your computer. Pretty nuts.
It's a good thought, how do we ever know where we are REALLY calling? Mitnick has destroyed my faith in the phone company. Especially after reading about the DMV scam (which is in a later chapter) where they forwarded the phone number and tricked the cops in giving them all sorts of personal information. The person could have just been pretending to be from Dell and is now using that credit card number you handed over for the support package. How will we ever trust again?
Interesting thought about whether the person really is from Dell. If it takes forever and the call is a pain in the ass, you've got Dell. If the person is really helpful and you're off the phone in no time, you probably have a social engineer on your hands. But seriously, Mitnick is destroying the sense of trust we all hold. In reference to Jenna's comment, unfortunately if you carry cash you run the risk of being robbed or mugged, so it's just a lose-lose situation no matter what.
Thats pretty sneaky about disguising the "x" as an agreement to install the virus. I also agree with never getting something for nothing. I can't tell you how many pop-ups, e-mails I get telling me I won a free i-pod. yeah right!
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