From: Jerry Shenk (jshenk@decommunications.com)
Date: Tue Mar 09 2004 - 21:32:46 EST
Once again, no papers that I know of. This was mentioned in the
firewall course I took at SANS last year.
If I were doing an audit that included this kind of social engineering,
I definitely would play that card. It doesn't even need to be in
person, a 'cute voice' on the phone would work just as well.
Oh, and it's "attractive girls", not "attractive people". I don't think
a 'hunk' is gonna have near the capacity to play this one that a cute
girl is....just don't think it works quite like that.
-----Original Message-----
From: Green, Neale S [mailto:neale.green@eds.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 09, 2004 4:10 PM
To: pen-test@securityfocus.com
Subject: Papers on Sex as an audit tool?
No, I'm not referring to the act ( as far as I know ), I'm referring to
the
common practice of the Big Audit Firms (and others) to pepper/"flesh
out"
their audit teams with young, attractive people (male and female, but
predominantly female due to the predominantly male base of the IT
Industry )
with little or no skills or experience in technical, security or audit
fields, to get information more easily through taking the proven "sex
sells"
sales tool, and using it as a social engineering tool to more easily get
the
information they want out of an organisation.
This trend has been increasing for years, and I have been trying to get
the
point across to our customers of what is happening, with little or no
success, so I was wondering whether anyone knows of any papers on the
subject that would help me get them to take it seriously.
>From my observation, external audit teams quite easily get information
that
they should not have access to ( or at most, controlled, monitored,
access
), by using the young, attractive, members of the team to charm it out
of
the business or IT people who control the information. When queried on
the
process issues, the business or IT people in question can very rarely,
if
ever, see that they have been "played" and will invariably create
excuses as
to why they gave out the restricted information so readily.
Obviously, we have a scenario whereby the average person would much
rather
believe that the people like them and/or are interested in them for
themselves, and will refuse to accept that they have been used to get
what
the outside parties want ( especially if they are ordinary, middle aged,
married men who's egos are titillated to have a young, attractive appear
to
be interested in them, it is an unfortunate fact of life that many men
are
susceptible to this ). The social engineering exercise and impact is no
less
notable because the external audit firms are supposedly "white hats" (
or at
most, Grey hats" ), rather than a "black hat" cracker who uses this
mechanism for an outright attack, in that, no matter the final outcome,
a
significant degree of deception and social engineering is involved.
Therefore, given that it is almost impossible to gain acceptance of the
situation directly, and I have found no papers on the subject in
personal
searches, I was interested whether others in the Security community have
any
knowledge of papers on this subject?
Thanking you in anticipation.
NB: Standard disclaimer, the views expressed are personal views of the
author, and are in no way indicative of the views or policies of EDS as
a
Corporate entity.
Regards,
Neale Green CISSP
Information Security
Phone: +61 2 937 80225
Mobile: 0414 979 627
Fax: +61 2 9312 6116
Email: neale.green@eds.com
------------------------------------------------------------------------
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