Social engineering (an act of exploiting people instead of computers) is one of the most dangerous tools in the hacker’s toolkit to breach internet security. The Ubiquiti Networks fell victim to a $39.1 M fraud as one of its staff members was hit by a fraudulent “Business Email Compromise” attack. Thousands of grandmas and grandpas are victim of phishing emails and are forced to pay ransom to have their data released.

In this new millennium, the cyber security game has changed significantly from annoying harmless viruses to stealing vital personal data, causing negative financial impact, demanding ransom, and spreading international political feud. Anyone with presence in the Cyber space has to protect himself/herself, the infrastructure, customers, and also deal with the legal repercussions in the event of a breach. In this talk Bhushan will present the different types of social engineering practices including use of social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the bad guys successfully use. The victims can range from the “C” levels (CEO, CFO, CTO) down to the individual contributors in an organization to a grandparent on her laptop. The presentation will also discuss a variety of ordinary but effective measures such as awareness campaign that organizations can take to minimize the risk of breach.

Speaker Bhushan Gupta

A principal consultant at Gupta Consulting LLC., Bhushan Gupta is passionate about the integration of web application security into Agile software development lifecycle. His interests extend to Social Engineering and Attack Surface Analysis. Bhushan worked at Hewlett-Packard for 13 years in various roles including quality engineer, software process architect, and software productivity manager. He then developed a strong interest in web application security while working as a quality engineer for Nike Inc. After 5 years at Nike, he retired and since has been studying various facets of web application security. Bhushan is a certified Six Sigma Black Belt (HP and ASQ) and an adjunct faculty member at the Oregon Institute of Technology in Software Engineering. To learn more about Bhushan, visit www.bgupta.com.

This meeting will be recorded! Feel free to tune in live, or catch the recording later (~24hrs after event).

The Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) is a 501c3 not-for-profit worldwide charitable organization focused on improving the security of application software. To sign up for future meeting notes and to discuss security topics with local gurus, sign up on the OWASP Portland mailing list: https://lists.owasp.org/mailman/listinfo/owasp-portland

Meetings are free and open to the public.

This class is designed to teach you how to recognize and safely avoid scams. By the end of this class, students will have an understanding of:

• What social engineering is
• How to detect scams
• The importance of strong passwords

This class is ideal for anyone who is comfortable using a computer for email, and web browsing, but concerned about online safety.