Cyber Primer

Cyber threats
Social engineering against an individual’s Facebook site
Who
What
How
Against
whom
Why
Allegedly state-sponsored individuals from China.
Social engineering.
Fake Facebook account created and used to send invitations from a fake profile
to colleagues in the victim’s address book.
Commander, United States European Command and NATO Supreme Allied
Commander Europe, Admiral James Stavridis and those to whom the invitations
were sent.
The aim appears to have been to use social engineering to collect personality
information on Admiral Stavridis. This information could later be processed to
provide intelligence on his personality profile and exploit his contacts network.
When Early 2012.
Impact
The wealth of personal information on Admiral Stavridis and potentially his
contact network would be invaluable for personality profiling by an adversary.
‘Senior British military officers and Ministry of Defence officials are understood to
have been among those who accepted “friend requests” from the bogus account
for American Admiral James Stavridis.
They thought they had become genuine friends of NATO’s Supreme Allied
Commander – but instead every personal detail on Facebook, including private
email addresses, phone numbers and pictures were able to be harvested.’
The Sunday Telegraph newspaper, 10 March 2012.
More
information
More information can be found at: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/
technology/9136029/How-spies-used-Facebook-to-steal-Nato-chiefs-details.
html
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