Free Privileged Account Discovery Tool: Identify & secure credentials to stop lateral movement. Download Free

BeyondTrust
  • Products
    Privileged Password Management
    Discover, manage, audit, and monitor privileged accounts
    Password Safe DevOps Secrets Safe
    Endpoint Privilege Management
    Manage privileges on Windows, Mac, Linux, and Unix endpoints
    Windows and Mac Unix and Linux Active Directory Bridge
    Secure Remote Access
    Centrally manage and secure remote access for service desks and vendors
    Remote Support Privileged Remote Access
    BeyondInsight Analytics
    See All Solutions
  • Resources

    Universal Privilege Management

    Our innovative Universal Privilege Management approach secures every user, asset, and session across your entire enterprise.

    Watch Video

    Learn

    Case Studies
    Competitor Comparisons
    Datasheets
    Glossary
    Product Demos
    Whitepapers

    Attend

    Events
    Go Beyond
    Training
    Webinars

    Support

    Changelog
    Professional Services
    Technical Documentation
  • Blog
  • Partners
  • Contact
  • Support
  • Services
  • Training
  • Events
  • Company

How Phishing Uses Our Strengths Against Us

January 22, 2020

  • Blog
  • Archive

In my December 2019 webinar, Hacking the Human, I demonstrate how to conduct a phishing campaign, using email-based social engineering to gain passwords. Why do I teach you how to phish this time, instead of showing you how to compromise computer systems? Well, one of the most effective ways to hack into an organization, hands down, is to use social engineering against its employees/members. This is borne out time and time again, as we see the bulk of compromises begin with a phishing attack. Even nation-state hacking operations, which have certainly bought/collected “zero day” exploits, appear to save these for precious few occasions. They know the same thing that organized crime and professional loan wolf bad actors know: phishing will get the initial access you’re seeking—almost every time.

Phishing is the best bang-for-your-buck form of social engineering, where “buck” here refers to a threat actor’s time. It scales better (hits more people per second) than in-person confidence games. Even in this era of robo-calls, online phishing still appears to have a higher success rate than phishing by voice (phone), also known as “vishing.”

So, why do phishing and social engineering techniques continue to work with such unwavering consistency?

At the end of the day, social engineering is effective because human beings have evolved to be vulnerable to it. That might sound pessimistic, so let’s expand. Social engineering is effective because it targets the very strengths that evolution has built for us.

Humanity’s unique strength as compared to other mammals, and even primates: we are incredibly social and can work together in very large groups. Put simplistically, we are inclined to be helpful to each other. That helpfulness means ancient human teams could hunt mammoths and that modern human teams can create multi-year, 50-person software engineering projects.

Unfortunately, social engineering can prey on humanity’s social strengths. Our helpful nature is one of the primary targets that effective social engineering exploits.

For a more in-depth exploration of how phishing works, and a demonstration on how to build your own phishing campaigns, watch this webinar.

Jay Beale

co-founder, COO and CTO, InGuardians

Jay Beale has created several defensive security tools, including Bastille Linux/UNIX and the CIS Linux Scoring Tool, both of which were used widely throughout industry and government. He has served as an invited speaker at many industry and government conferences, a columnist for Information Security Magazine, SecurityPortal and SecurityFocus, and a contributor to nine books, including those in his Open Source Security Series and the “Stealing the Network” series. He has led training classes on Linux Hardening and other topics at Black Hat, CanSecWest, RSA, and IDG conferences, as well as in private corporate training. Jay is a co-founder, Chief Operating Officer and CTO of the information security consulting company InGuardians.

Stay Up To Date

Get the latest news, ideas, and tactics from BeyondTrust. You may unsubscribe at any time.

I agree to receive product related communications from BeyondTrust as detailed in the Privacy Policy, and I may manage my preferences or withdraw my consent at any time.

You May Also Be Interested In:

Webcasts | February 09, 2021

Customer Webinar: Remote Support 21.1 Released!

Webcasts | February 24, 2021

Your PAM 2021 Blueprint: Securing Privileged Accounts for On-Premises and Cloud Assets

Whitepapers

Evolving Privileged Identity Management (PIM) In The 'Next Normal'

BeyondTrust Logo
  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn

Keep up with BeyondTrust

I agree to receive product related communications from BeyondTrust as detailed in the Privacy Policy, and I may manage my preferences or withdraw my consent at any time.

Customer Support
Contact Sales

Products

  • Endpoint Privilege Management
  • Password Management
  • Privileged Remote Access
  • DevOps Secrets Safe
  • Remote Support

Resources

  • Blog
  • Case Studies
  • Competitor Comparisons
  • Datasheets
  • Glossary
  • Videos
  • Webcasts
  • Whitepapers

About

  • Company
  • Careers
  • Contact
  • Events
  • Leadership Team
  • Partner Program
  • Press

Languages

  • English
  • German
  • French
  • Spanish
  • Korean
  • Portuguese
  • Japanese
  • Privacy
  • Security
  • Manage Cookies
  • WEEE Compliance

Copyright © 1999 — 2020 BeyondTrust Corporation. All rights reserved. Other trademarks identified on this page are owned by their respective owners. BeyondTrust Corporation is not a chartered bank or trust company, or depository institution. It is not authorized to accept deposits or trust accounts and is not licensed or regulated by any state or federal banking authority.