Hacking Humans

In addition to his regular story Dave shares a situation where his mom almost took the bait, Dave's story is about an SMS phishing (smishing) Apple scam in UK (ps, there's never a free iPhone & Joe is still not an Apple fan), Joe's story talks about why you don't trust anything political on a social network, The Catch of the Day is from a Reddit user invited to join the Illuminati game, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Alex Mosher from MobileIron on MobileIron's Phishing with Cookies Campaign.Links to stories and Catch of the Day: SMS phishing scam pretends to be Apple “chatbot” – don’t fall for it! Chinese propaganda network on Facebook used AI-generated faces Catch of the Day on Reddit Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

From the intrusion kill chain model, the first part of an exploitation technique where the hacker tricks their victims into revealing their login credentials. In the second part of the technique, hackers legitimately log into the targeted system and gain access to the underlying network with the same permissions as the victim. Hackers use this method 80% of the time compared to other ways to gain access to a system like developing zero day exploits for known software packages. The most common way hackers steal credentials is with some version of a phishing attack.

Dave and Joe have some follow-up from a listener on OG accounts, Joe's story talks about a new phishing campaign inspired by Twitter from earlier this summer, Dave shares a story about using security awareness training as phishing lures, The Catch of the Day is a SunTrust phishing scam, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Tim Sadler from Tessian on the Psychology of Human Error report.Links to stories and Catch of the Day: New Twitter phishing scam inspired from Twitter’s latest security response This security awareness training email is actually a phishing scam Catch of the Day on Twitter Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

An electro-mechanical device used to break Enigma-enciphered messages about enemy military operations during the Second World War. The first bombe–named Victory and designed by Alan Turning and Gordon Welchman– started code-breaking at Bletchley Park on 14 March 1940, a year after WWII began. By the end of the war, five years later, almost 2000, mostly women, sailors and airmen operated 211 bombe machines in the effort. The allies essentially knew what the German forces were going to do before the German commanders in the field knew. Historians speculate that the effort at Bletchley Park shortened the war by years and estimate the number of lives saved to be between 14 and 21 million.

Dave and Joe have some follow-up on mobile banking apps, Dave talks about the website bitcoinabuse.com, Joe's story Brian Krebs did on old Gmail emails and people using them either errantly or maliciously to create accounts, The Catch of the Day is about a Netflix-themed campaign that's currently running, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Shai Cohen from TransUnion on identity fraud at center of many digital COVID-19 scams.Links to stories: Bitcoin Abuse Database The Joys of Owning an ‘OG’ Email Account Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

From the intrusion kill chain model, a malicious code delivery technique that allows hackers to send code of their choosing to their victim’s browser. XSS takes advantage of the fact that roughly 90% of web developers use the JavaScript scripting language to create dynamic content on their websites. Through various methods, hackers store their own malicious javascript code on unprotected websites. When the victim browses the site, the web server delivers that malicious code to the victim’s computer and the victim’s browser runs the code.

Joe shares a story on the ability to make a scam work through storytelling skills, Dave's story is about a guy duping a convenience store clerk into taking over her shift and later robbing the place, The Catch of the Day is about an email from a fake landlord, and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Mallory Sofastaii a reporter and anchor at WMAR2 on Impostor uses Maryland man's identity to steal unemployment insurance benefits.Links to stories and Catch of the Day: The Age-Old Secrets of Modern Scams Twitter: @findmyscammer Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

The process of evaluating the security of a system or network by simulating an attack on it. Sometimes called "ethical hacking" or white hat hacking. The phrase started to appear in U.S. military circles in the mid 1960s as time sharing computers became more necessary for daily operations. Computer security experts from Rand Corporation began describing computer compromises as “penetrations.” By the early 1970s, government leaders formed tiger teams of penetration testers to probe for weaknesses in various government systems.

Dave & Joe have a tip as some follow-up on cloning social media accounts, Dave's story is about turning the tables on hackers in the UK, Joe talks about Kaspersky's Spam and phishing report, The Catch of the Day is is from a listener, Bob, who received an email from Eddy looking for the love of a woman (but, Bob is not a woman), and later in the show, Dave's conversation with Max Heinemeyer from Darktrace on threats that he and his team have tracked throughout the onset and spread of COVID. Links to stories: Boomer outsmarts hackers: “Kiss your cash goodbye” Spam and phishing in Q2 2020 Have a Catch of the Day you'd like to share? Email it to us at hackinghumans@thecyberwire.com or hit us up on Twitter.

The art of convincing a person or persons to take an action that may or may not be in their best interests. Social engineering in some form or the other has been around since the beginning of time. The biblical story of Esau and Jacob might be considered one of the earliest written social engineering stories. As applied to cybersecurity, it usually involves hackers obtaining information illegitimately by deceiving or manipulating people who have legitimate access to that information. Common tactics involve phishing attacks and watering hole attacks.