Social Engineering - simple (Act 1)

Some questions answered here.

  1. How simple social engineering can result in loss.

About Social Engineering[1]

  • Awareness to Social Engineering should be considered good practice.
  • Entrails on howtos to perform the acts should be avoided.

Stage 1: wholesome firefox user files

Scenario

  • Bob has already backdoor root(sometimes user) access, eg ssh, to Alice' computer.
  • Bob is unable to get password to Alice' websites as Alice only logs in via browser using non-written/non-saved passwords.

Scene 1: Social engineering

  • Hey Alice, I have transferred some money to your account, can you please login and check and reply back on chat.
    • Bob immediately backdoor logs in Alice' computer and waits for Alice to log into account.
  • Hey Bob, I logged in and checked, its seems to be all ok, thank you.
    • Bob immediately zips ~/.mozilla folder and downloads it, before Alice logs out.
    • Bob also captures urls for website after Alice logged in.
  • Hey Alice, good to know.

Scene 2: Social engineering done, now playback

  • Bob unpacks downloaded zip file and visits last captured logged in url using alice' firefox profile.
  • Bob is now logged into the site. :-)

Cut: Caveats/Announcement

  • Above has only been simulated+tested with few web-hosting sites.
  • Sometimes just backdoor user login access is sufficient.
  • Some sites have extra layer of security to fight these approaches, eg. temporary IP based logins.

Packup!

Author

V.Krishn


Resources


Edit - History - Print - Recent Changes - Search
Page last modified on October 23, 2025, at 10:51 PM