News of the Week 2-26-18

When you first hear the term “Social Engineering” your mind might have you thinking about some oppressive government manipulating its population for some devious purpose. In today’s internet world however that term has a completely different connotation.

“Social Engineering”, in today’s context, refers to a type of fraud that occurs in a multi-stage process. The perpetrators, through various means, obtain information about an intended target; enough to convince the target that they are legitimate but not enough to actually commit the crime. Using the information that they have, the criminals attempt to trick unwitting victims into providing them the additional confidential information needed for them to execute fraudulent funds transfers.

One of the most common ploys to obtain the necessary information is an interactive Phone Phishing scheme which uses a legitimate sounding phone, text or email message that is made to appear to be coming from a financial institution or business that is recognizable to the intended victim. The recipient of the messagel is asked to “verify” their personal information. This information can then be used to execute the crime.

According to the FBI’s 2016 Internet Crime Report, the FBI Internet Crime Center received over 12,000 complaints that represented losses of over $360,000,000.