Social engineering is a set of techniques used to persuade and manipulate people in order to obtain confidential information. Selva Orejón and Nuria Pineda participate in Module 2a “Cybersecurity Awareness” of C1b3rWall Academy 2021 delivering a conference on ” Social engineering: action and prevention of cyber-attacks” where they will talk cyber-attacks that are carried out through social engineering, the risks associated with falling victim to this type of attack, as well as the basic guidelines for action and prevention.

Selva Orejón is a legal expert specialized in digital identity and reputation. Her company, onBRANDING, has been specialized in online reputation crisis management for celebrities, companies and anonymous citizens for 14 years. Nuria Pineda has a degree in Security from the University of Barcelona and works as an analyst at the same company.

Social engineering and cybercrime

Cybercriminals use social engineering to commit all kinds of crimes, this conference highlights the three most common cases in our professional practice:

  • Hacking of social network accounts: criminals send a predetermined message to hundreds of users from profiles that look like official platform profiles. A link is included and when the victim enters his or her credentials, the account is stolen (phishing).
  • Hacking of instant messaging accounts: criminals create and/or hijack Telegram accounts and ask their victims from WhatsApp for the code they receive by SMS that warns them of logging in from another device, which turns out to be from Telegram.
  • Economic scams: criminals generate a relationship of trust with their victims to subsequently request money, either as a result of a love relationship (“love scam”), to avoid publishing compromising images or videos (sextortion) or to invest in fraudulent stocks or cryptocurrencies.

People are configured as a key piece in the prevention of this type of cyber-attacks. For this reason, awareness and training are essential to enable people to protect themselves, their environment, family or business.

You can read the full article on News-365.

Selva and Nuria teach us how to protect ourselves from cyber-attacks, to learn all these tips, register for free at C1b3rWall Academy 2021.

You also have the opportunity to delve deeper into this topic and other areas of internet security by doing the Master in Cybersecurity of the University of Salamanca. Registration is now open for the call that will start in February 2022.

To learn more click on the following link.

Posted by Juan M. Corchado

Juan Manuel Corchado (15 May 1971, Salamanca, Spain) is Professor at the University of Salamanca. He has been Vice-Rector for Research from 2013 to 2017 and Director of the Science Park of the University of Salamanca. Elected as Dean of the Faculty of Science twice, he holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salamanca and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from the University of the West of Scotland. He leads the renowned BISITE (Bioinformatics, Intelligent Systems and Educational Technology) Research Group, created in 2000. Director of the IoT Digital Innovation Hub and President of the AIR Institute, J. M. Corchado is also Visiting Professor at the Osaka Institute of Technology since January 2015, Visiting Professor at the Universiti Malaysia Kelantan and Member of the Advisory Group on Online Terrorist Propaganda of the European Counter Terrorism Centre (EUROPOL). J. M. Corchado has been president of the IEEE Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society, and academic coordinator of the University Institute for Research in Art and Animation Technology at the University of Salamanca, as well as researcher at the Universities of Paisley (UK), Vigo (Spain) and the Plymouth Marine Laboratory (UK). He currently combines all his activity with the direction of Master programmes in Security, Digital Animation, Mobile Telephony, Information Systems Management, Internet of Things, Social Media, 3D Design and Printing, Blockchain, Z System, Industry 4.0, Agile Project Management, and Smart Cities & Intelligent Buildings, at the University of Salamanca and his work as editor-in-chief of the journals ADCAIJ (Advances in Distributed Computing and Artificial Intelligence Journal), OJCST (Oriental Journal of Computer Science and Technology) or Electronics MDPI (Computer Science & Engineering section). J. M. Corchado mainly works on projects related to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, IoT, Fog Computing, Edge Computing, Smart Cities, Smart Grids and Sentiment Analysis. He has recently been included in the board of trustees of the AstraZeneca Foundation, along with other health professionals and researchers recognised for bringing scientific knowledge closer to society.