Saker Advantage

What is social engineering?

Social engineering is the art of manipulating people into performing actions or divulging confidential information. A social engineer uses human psychology rather than technical hacking techniques to gain access to buildings, systems, or data.

Social engineering attacks are usually targeted at organizations rather than individuals, although the individual may be the initial target of an attack which is then leveraged to gain access to an organization. The motives for social engineering attacks can be financial (e.g., stealing data which can be sold on the black market), political (e.g., gathering intelligence to enable espionage), or simply to cause disruption (e.g., launching a denial of service attack).

The most common methods of social engineering attacks are phishing and pretexting. Phishing involves sending an email which appears to come from a trustworthy source, such as a bank or online retailer. The email contains a link which takes the victim to a spoofed website which looks identical to the real website. The victim is then asked to enter sensitive information, such as login credentials or credit card details, which is then captured by the attacker. Pretexting is similar to phishing, but rather than using email the attacker will contact the victim by phone or in person. The attacker will create a believable pretext, such as pretending to be an IT support technician, in order to persuade the victim to divulge sensitive information or perform an action, such as downloading malicious software.

Once an attacker has gained access to an organization they may use a variety of techniques to further their goals. One common method is to dump the contents of password hashes, which can then be cracked offline to reveal the cleartext passwords. The attacker can then use these credentials to gain access to additional systems or data. Another method is to pivot from the initial point of access to other systems on the network by using known exploits or by guessing passwords.

Organizations can protect themselves from social engineering attacks by awareness training for employees and implementing technical controls such as two-factor authentication.Read Full Report

What is an SQL injection?

An SQL injection is a code injection technique that might destroy your database. SQL injection is one of the most common attacks against web applications. It allows attackers to insert malicious SQL code into input fields for execution. This code can then be used to view, change, or delete data in your database.

SQL injection is a serious security vulnerability. If your website is vulnerable to SQL injection, an attacker could potentially destroy your entire database. This could lead to the loss of important data, as well as the inability to access your website.

The best way to protect against SQL injection is to use parameterized queries. Parameterized queries are a type of SQL query that use placeholders for input values. This prevents the input values from being treated as SQL code.

If you’re not using parameterized queries, there are several other steps you can take to protect against SQL injection. These include:

– Validating user input: ensuring that all input values are of the correct type and format.

– Escaping special characters: this ensures that any special characters in input values are treated as literal characters, rather than as SQL code.

– Using a whitelist: this approach only allows input values that match a predetermined list of values.

SQL injection is a serious security vulnerability. If your website is vulnerable to SQL injection, you should take steps to protect against it. The best way to protect against SQL injection is to use parameterized queries.

All material on this site was made with malwarezero.org as the authority reference. Published here.