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Mail Archives: djgpp/2002/02/20/15:31:04

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From: roadraat AT aol DOT com (Nelson Fleet)
Newsgroups: comp.os.msdos.djgpp
Subject: Re: could you please compile this?
Date: 20 Feb 2002 12:04:39 -0800
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cesar tejeda <cesar_tejeda_her AT yahoo DOT es> wrote in message news:<20020219100219 DOT 66362 DOT qmail AT web20807 DOT mail DOT yahoo DOT com>...
  
> BTW, What is social engineering? 
> Why this e-mail sounds you like that?
> 
> :-?

It's jargon from computer security and criminal hacking.  It's a fancy
term for fooling people into doing what you want.

If you were trying to break into something, you might try to crack the
password.  That's hard.  Or you might try to reverse engineer the
authentication software.  That's also hard.

However, if you call somebody in your target and pose as someone from
the help desk, you might convince them that you're working on the
system and talk them into just giving you their password.  That's
social engineering.

One of the prettier (albeit nefarious) social engineering malicious
pranks was the virus that wasn't a virus.  Somebody sent out email
warning people that they might be infected and admonished them to
delete the virus if they found it on their system.  Except... it
wasn't a virus.  It was a system utility, which disabled certain
functionality when the victims deleted it.

That's social engineering.  There was no virus.  The vandal simply
talked the ignorant into damaging their own machines.  It really was
as stupid as that joke about the Amish virus ("since we, the Amish,
don't have computers you are on your honor to delete all of your
files...thank you").

Nobody is going to compile your code for you.  You might have written
your own virus, chum.  Then when we compile and execute it, we're
toast.

If it's not a virus, great.  Do your own homework.  If you can't
download and install a C compiler, you don't have the personal
resources to program in C anyway.

Nelson

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