Become an Ethical Hacker with Social Engineering and Generative AI
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For the entertainment resorts MGM Resorts International in Las Vegas, the 10th of September 2023 probably will be remembered for a long time.
On this day, the company became victim of cyber criminals which shut down their entire business operations allegedly through a 10-minute phone call.
So, if you are interested in starting or advancing your career as an ethical hacker, you not only want to learn about network protocols and classic hacking skills, but also about social engineering and Generative AI. These are two of the most promising and powerful tools that hackers can use to breach security systems and manipulate human behavior.
But why Social Engineering?
Social engineering is the art of exploiting human psychology and emotions to influence people to perform actions or divulge information that they normally wouldn’t. It is often considered the most effective attack vector, as it bypasses technical defenses and targets the weakest link in any system: the human factor. According to a report by Verizon, 22% of data breaches in 2019 involved social engineering, making it the second most common cause of incidents after credential theft.
One of the main techniques of social engineering is reconnaissance, which involves gathering information about the target organization, its employees, its customers, its partners, and its competitors. This information can be used to craft convincing phishing emails, impersonate legitimate contacts, or create fake profiles on social media. Reconnaissance can be done through various sources, such as public records, online databases, websites, forums, blogs, podcasts, and social media platforms. This is where OSINT (Open Source Intelligence) comes in handy.
OSINT is the process of collecting and analyzing information from publicly available sources. It can help hackers find vulnerabilities, identify targets, and plan attacks. OSINT can also help ethical hackers perform penetration testing, threat intelligence, and incident response.
However, reconnaissance and OSINT are not enough to perform a successful social engineering attack. Hackers also need to persuade or deceive their targets to take action or reveal information. This is where generative AI comes into play.
So, and why the heck should I learn about Generative AI?
Generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence that focuses on creating new content or data from existing data. It can be used to generate realistic images, videos, audio, text, or even code. One of the most popular applications of generative AI is deepfakes, which are synthetic media that can manipulate or replace the face or voice of a person with another person’s face or voice.
Deepfakes can be used for various purposes, such as entertainment, education, art, or activism. However, they can also be used for malicious purposes, such as fraud, blackmail, defamation, or propaganda. For example, hackers can use deepfakes to impersonate CEOs, celebrities, politicians, or other influential figures and make them say or do things that they never said or did. They can also use deepfakes to create fake evidence, fake news, or fake testimonials.
To create deepfakes, hackers need to have access to training data of their target person’s face or voice. This can be obtained from various sources, such as videos, photos, podcasts, interviews, speeches, or phone calls. Hackers can then use tools such as DeepFaceLab, FaceSwap, or Wav2Lip to generate deepfakes using generative adversarial networks (GANs), which are a type of neural network that can learn from data and produce realistic outputs.
In conclusion, to become an ethical hacker with social engineering and generative AI skills, you need to learn how to use these tools and techniques responsibly and legally. You also need to have a solid foundation in classic hacking skills, such as networking, cryptography, web application security, reverse engineering, malware analysis, and exploit development. We are certainly in the beginning of the ear of AI driven cyberattacks. But these attacks will occur more and more in future, so basically everyone might become a victim of it.
Ethical hacking is a challenging and rewarding career that requires constant learning and creativity. By mastering social engineering and generative AI skills,
you can enhance your hacking capabilities and help protect organizations and individuals from cyber threats.
About Tobias Faiss
Tobias is a Senior Engineering Manager, focusing on applied Leadership, Analytics and Cyber Resilience. He has a track record of 18+ year in managing software-projects, -services and -teams in the United States, EMEA and Asia-Pacific. He currently leads several multinational teams in Germany, India, Singapore and Vietnam. Also, he is the founder of the delta2 edventures project where its mission is to educate students, IT professionals and executives to build a digital connected, secure and reliable world and provides training for individuals.
Tobias’ latest book is ‘The Art of IT-Management: How to Successfully Lead Your Company Into the Digital Future’. You can also contact him on his personal website tobiasfaiss.com