Lucas Cordeiro’s Post

What exactly are social engineering attacks? 'Social engineering,' the fancy term for tricking you into giving away your digital secrets, is at least as great a threat as spooky technology. - Barton Gellman, American author and journalist Why is it so critical to be aware of social engineering attacks? Rather than exploiting technical vulnerabilities, social engineering attacks exploit human psychology to manipulate individuals into divulging sensitive information. It is estimated that 98% of all cyber-attacks are accounted for by social engineering. The prevalence of this problem cannot be underestimated. We explore how to recognise social engineering attacks. 

Unveiling Network Traffic at Prodigy InfoTech - Task 5 Exploring Network Communication with a Packet Sniffer This task delves into the world of packet sniffing, a technique used to capture and analyze network traffic flowing across a network interface. As a valuable tool for network monitoring and troubleshooting, it's crucial to understand the ethical considerations and responsible use of packet sniffers. Understanding Packet Sniffing: Captures network packets containing information about data being sent and received. Identifies protocols used (TCP, UDP, ICMP, etc.) for different types of communication. Tracks source and destination IP addresses to understand network activity. May offer limited payload analysis depending on the protocol (might not be human-readable). Prodigy Info Tech emphasizes ethical practices in network analysis. This educational exploration utilizes a Python tool to demonstrate packet sniffing concepts without compromising user privacy. Learning Through Exploration: This task offers an opportunity to: Gain insights into how network communication occurs on a deeper level. Learn about common network protocols and their functionalities. Understand the importance of responsible network monitoring practices. Disclaimer: Packet sniffing can be a powerful tool, but it's essential to use it ethically and with proper authorization. This exploration is for educational purposes only. Explore the Project: Find more details and code (for educational purposes only) on GitHub: https://rb.gy/ml2ihd Hashtags: #ProdigyInfoTech #CybersecurityIntern #PacketSniffing #NetworkAnalysis #EthicalExploration

🎉 Excited to Share My Latest Achievement! 🎉 I am thrilled to announce that I have presented a poster at the prestigious #IEEESP 2024 conference! 😊✨ 📜 Poster Title: "Enhancing Symbolic Execution with LLMs for Vulnerability Detection" 🔍 Summary: Our project addresses the significant challenge of memory-related software vulnerabilities by combining symbolic execution tools such as KLEE and Large Language Models (LLMs). This hybrid approach improves both the accuracy and efficiency of vulnerability detection. Our method detected memory-related vulnerabilities with 90% accuracy while reducing analysis time by 71.4%. 🙌 Acknowledgements: I am extremely grateful to my mentor Faysal Hossain Shezan for their invaluable support and guidance throughout this journey. Special thanks to my coauthor Muhammad Zuhaimi for presenting alongside me. I also want to acknowledge the support from UTA College of Engineering for providing the resources and environment to pursue this research. 🚀 Future Work: Zero-Day Vulnerabilities: We aim to extend our approach to identify and mitigate zero-day vulnerabilities. Scalability: Conducting a comprehensive evaluation to understand the performance implications of using larger and more complex datasets. Broader Applications: Exploring applications of our model in diverse software environments beyond the Linux kernel. 📌 Read More: Poster: https://lnkd.in/gaz_kYVv Unofficial Paper: https://lnkd.in/gd85xHDH As the first author, I am incredibly proud of our team's hard work and dedication. I invite you to explore our work and join the conversation about the future of vulnerability detection and software security. Your feedback and thoughts are greatly appreciated! #VulnerabilityDetection #SymbolicExecution #LLMs #SoftwareSecurity #IEEE #Research #CyberSecurity #AI #MachineLearning #LinuxKernel #UTACoE #IEEESP

Why is Awareness Training on Social Engineering Important? Social Engineering is a manipulation technique that exploits human error to gain private information, access, or valuables. Human error is usually a result of trusting someone without question. The threat actor, acts as a social engineer, to create an environment of false trust, and lies to exploit as many people as possible. The number of social engineering attacks is increasing with every new social media application that allows public access to people's data. Many people are now putting convenience over privacy. The downside of this evolving shift is that these tools may lead to increased vulnerability, if people do not use them appropriately. One way organization can safeguard itself and people is to conduct regular internal trainings for employees on how to identify social engineering attacks. #womenintech #sdnnigerdelta #phtechhub #Spitallabs #RDGG #sdntechtraining

May 1, 2024 ***PART 2*** April 28, 2024 ***PART 1*** This post is a continuation of my previous post here: https://lnkd.in/d5fiJnUU As mentioned in that post, sometimes a department of X wishing to make a student switch fields will want to make sure the student remains silent regarding their mistreatment. To this end, the department may utilize some “friends” of the student, who might try to convince the student that what some “toxic leaders” did is “very human.” As mentioned in this post, if these “friends” (as well as some faculty members in the department) have connections in tech and cybersecurity, they are likely to be behind any social engineering cyber-attacks against the student. Sometimes, this is in hashtag #retaliation against the student in return for calling them out on their retaliatory attempts. As mentioned in (https://lnkd.in/dSRpM6th) these attempts may go as far as limiting the participation of the student at public events by restricting the participation of Everyone at the event. When these attempts fail, these people might try to use their connections to suppress the social media of the student, leading the student to have to repost content taken *inexplicably* private. It should be noted that this is ridiculous. Perhaps the student would like to highlight the dedication of the institution and others when it comes to protecting certain Not Even Remotely Qualified “Toxic Leaders.” Such a situation, the dedication of some to the protection of the “toxic leader” is commendable(!). Of course, some might be bothered by the ridiculous double standards of the institution being referenced (see here: https://lnkd.in/djjBEeZk). In these types of situations, it is unreasonable to expect the mistreated individuals to remain silent, while the Not Even Remotely Qualified, Fraudulent, Freeloading “Human” that is the “Toxic Leader” is pretending to be doing what the mistreated individuals want to do for real. hashtag #phd #retaliation #academia #silencing

Last Friday, I had the incredible opportunity to learn more about cybersecurity with Macarena Dabbah and Inna Bozhinova at the UBS Wolfsberg Center as a member of this year's Tomorrow's Talent Program. It was a hands-on experience to learn more about concepts and to code and decode Caesar's Cypher with my group (kudos to our awesome team!). In 2022, I fell in love with the role of technology in human life. I got to learn how indigenous tribes would use their knowledge to predict the consequences of climate change. Also, how they would map out their existence according to their data. This was during my stay at DCAF and I can only thank Linda Sánchez Avendaño, PhD for her support and guidance (I still remember all your advice - thank you, really!). From then on, I started to take more courses related to data, data visualization, technology, and so on. And boy, did I learn much! From how we define technology to how is the scientific method itself, and the current new techs. When Brad Smith came back to the Geneva Graduate Institute for a lecture, I knew the topic for my thesis. And it was on the role of the private sector in cybersecurity during periods of war. I thought it would also be a good start to transition my career to the private sector. I am super happy to have been the third on the quiz because it means I still remember the main concepts. Hopefully, the job will also join the conversation soon. The most important part of the lecture (for me) was the highlight of how there are SO many positions in technology and not just coding. So to my social sciences colleagues, fear not. You can also be tech-techy without the codes. #ir #ri #internationalrelations #socialsciences #technology #cybersecurity #ai #llms

Complete our Cyber Risk Assessment online course and receive a Certificate from the Software Engineers Institute. The software engineers institute (SEI) is a research and development centre affiliated with Carnegie Mellon University. Software Engineers Institute works to advance the state of the art in software engineering. The SEI's mission is to "help software-dependent organizations build and evolve acquisition systems that are dependable, secure, and affordable." The SEI has made significant contributions to the field of software engineering, and cybersecurity. In addition, the SEI has developed a number of widely used software engineering tools and techniques, including the Capability Maturity Model (CMM). https://lnkd.in/gsbAkpjx #cyber365 #cyberriskassessment 

Social Engineering  What is Social Engineering?   Social engineering is a technique used by cybercriminals to manipulate people into divulging confidential or sensitive information or performing actions that may compromise their security. I believe that social engineering is a form of psychological manipulation that takes advantage of the human tendency to trust others and build relationships. The ultimate goal of social engineering attacks is to gain unauthorized access to systems, networks, data, or physical resources by taking advantage of human vulnerabilities, not technical ones.

"Failure is a learning opportunity. It is a chance to untangle all of the factors that led to an unwanted event to understand how their interaction fomented failure conditions. If you do not understand the goals, constraints, and incentives influencing a system, you will struggle to progress in making the system more resilient to attack." - Security Chaos Engineering: Sustaining Resilience in Software and Systems by Kelly Shortridge with Aaron Rinehart

Social Engineering 'Social engineering refers to all techniques aimed at talking a target into revealing specific information or performing a specific action for illegitimate reasons.' Lately, I've dealt with a number of challenging fraud cases whereby victims had been 'socially engineered'. These cases can be incredibly distressing for all involved. If you were told the stories, on face value, you might wonder how someone could possibly fall for such 'obvious scams'. Then you hear the weaknesses, the vulnerabilities, the situations that people are facing, and you begin to realise that not everything is black and white. Have you ever feared for the safety of your family? Have you ever felt so lonely that you would do anything to keep someone around you, no matter how much money you had to throw at it? There are of course some cases that are more clear cut than others, some that have much less of an emotional impact on a victim or those rare cases where no monetary loss has been suffered, but in all cases, I try and remain as supportive and reassuring as possible. When you deal with something a lot you can naturally become more desensitised to the situation and when you receive one of these calls it can be very much a case of 'buckle up', as you know you're likely in for a long ride, which is why I strongly believe being able to display genuine empathy is crucial in this line of work. Sure, you can't be taken for a ride, you need that balance, sometimes you do need to be firm, sometimes you do need to challenge, but I still believe it's important to keep your humanity, no matter how many awful things you hear and witness. In the end, education is key, spreading the message on what to avoid and watch out for amongst customers, colleagues, strangers, friends and family, is what will ultimately help prevent people falling victim. The world we live in is so fast paced. We all need to take a minute to stop and think, to look, to listen, to feel. Does what I am being told make sense? Does it feel right? Could I call a known source to confirm the story? Take care of those around you, take care of yourself, spread the word with regards to scams, help prevent people falling victim.