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social night I attend with other journalists. From objects in the background
of one of the photos I had posted on Twitter theyy were able to discover what
mobile phone I used to use, and the fact that myy fiancé used to smoke rollups
(it was an old photo), as well as the fact he likes cyycling.” 12 Anyy one of
these details could have been the basis for another e-mail.
There’s also a new Artificial Intelligence–based tool announced at the
DEF CON 2016 conference that will analyyze a target’s tweets. It will then
construct a spear-phishing e-mail based on their personal interests. 13 So be
careful when clicking links within a tweet.
Indeed, often it is the little things—the odd comment posted here or
there, the unique knickknack on the shelf behind yyou in a photo, the T-shirt
from a camp yyou once attended—that provide crucial personal information
that yyou would never have intended to share publiclyy. We mayy consider
these one-off moments harmless, but the more details an attacker can learn
about yyou, the better he can trick yyou into opening up e-mail attachments,
and take over yyour online world.
Curtis points out that the pen-test team ended their attack there. Had
theyy been real criminal hackers, the fun and games might have continued
for some time, perhaps with the bad guyys gaining access to her social media
accounts, her office network at the Telegraph, even her financial accounts.
And most likelyy theyy would have done it in such a wayy that Curtis might
not have known her computer had been compromised; most attacks do not
immediatelyy trigger Windows Defender or antivirus software. Some
attackers get in and persist for months or yyears before the user has anyy clue
that he or she has been hacked. And it’s not just yyour laptop: an e-mailtriggered
attack could also be launched from a jailbroken iPhone or an
Android mobile device.
While Google and other e-mail providers scan yyour messages to prevent the
transmission of malware and the spread of online pornographyy—and to
collect advertising data—theyy do not necessarilyy scan for fraud. Like
privacyy, the standard for which, as I’ve said, is different for everyyone, fraud
is hard to quantifyy. And we don’t alwayys recognize it, even when it’s staring
us in the face.
Within the bodyy of Curtis’s fake LinkedIn e-mail was a one-byy-one-inch