What is Social Engineering?
Social Engineering is not a very often mentioned term in the computer field. Most of the time when people hear about it, some computer users think that it is like a common engineering such as Computer Engineering, and Electrical Engineering. However, Social Engineering tells us a different story.
Social engineering is the act of physiological manipulating or attempting to obtain people security information by tricking users into telling their confidential information rather than use hacking software. What does make Social Engineering succeed in our society? Social Engineering is very successful because its victims believe in people who want to help in a very natural manner. Moreover, people are conned and they do not realize that the information given away is going to be used to attack them in the network.
Social Engineering was first introduced by the computer programmer Kevin David Mitnick. Kevin Mitnick was grown in a very poorly family in Los Angeles. Since he was a kid he felt a computer passion. He was found guilty of several computers and communication fraud. In his early year, he hacked the bus transportation in Los Angeles getting free transfer to travel in the city. Social Engineering became his primary weapon to practice all kind of illegal computer mischievous. Mitnick did his first computer unauthorized access in 1979 when he was 16 year old. According to some news sources while Mitnick was fugitive he made cloned cell phone to hide from the police. He was gotten with a lot of false identification. In 1988 he was found guilty of breaking and altering network companies security passwords and e-mails. Therefore, a court in Los Angeles sentenced him to twelve months in prison. Also he was accused of skipping the FBI, getting administrator privilege in IBM in order to win a bet, cracking into Motorola, Sun Microsystems, and Nokia and so on.