[ISN] In cyberattacks, hacking humans is highly effective way to access systems

http://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/in-cyberattacks-hacking-humans-is-highly-effective-way-to-access-systems/2012/09/26/2da66866-ddab-11e1-8e43-4a3c4375504a_story.html

By Robert O’Harrow Jr.
The Washington Post
Zero Day
September 26, 2012

The e-mails arrived like poison darts from cyberspace.

Some went to the Chertoff Group, a national security consulting firm in 
Washington. Others targeted intelligence contractors, gas pipeline 
executives and industrial-control security specialists. Each note came 
with the personal touches of a friend or colleague.

“Attach[ed] is a quote for the Social Media training we discussed,” said 
one message sent on July 3 to the vice president of EnergySec, a 
federally funded group in Oregon that focuses on the cybersecurity of 
the nation’s power grid.

But like much of the digital universe, the e-mails were not what they 
seemed. They were cyberweapons, part of a devastating kind of attack 
known as “social engineering.”

Emerging details about the e-mails show how social engineering — long 
favored by con artists, identity thieves and spammers — has become one 
of the leading threats to government and corporate networks in 
cyberspace.

[...]


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