CERT Issues Social Engineering Alert

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CERT Incident Note IN-2002-03 warns of a growing number of social engineering attacks targeting IRC and Instant Messenger chatters. Users are being sent messages that claim that a virus has been detected on their system and offer links to "fixes." But these links actually point to distributed denial of service tools, trojan horses, and other hostile programs. As always, never accept security updates from any person or organization other than the source.

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I still say that social engineering is hacking. CERT even issued an incident note about it, come on people. It's the oldest trick in the book and to this day it's still considered by many experts as hacking. The only 'patch' for this vulnerability is to educate yourself and know you weaknesses as well as your computers.

Remote_Access_

Well, I don't want to get into the whole "Is social engineering hacking" debate again. BUT, if CERT (COMPUTER emergency responce team) is issuing warnings about Social Engineering, doesn't that tell you something? I'll admint that CERT is a bunch of screwups sometimes, but that is beside the point. They give out warnings about vulnerabilites. They consider social engineering a computer vulnerablity. In other words......

Well, CERT is just giving the heads up, and since these attacks of social engineering are obviously directed towards computer users, that would have to fall into their jurisdiction.

To bad no newbies will know who the hell CERT is. Or that they need to recieve CERT warnings.

good luck to all you newbies.:thumbsup:

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CERT (COMPUTER emergency responce team)

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ouh oh...get with the times souleman....you expanded the acronym....that's so...like...90's :D

A2. What does "CERT" stand for? Please define the acronym.

"CERT" and "CERT Coordination Center" are registered with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office as service marks of Carnegie Mellon University. When you refer to the CERT/CC in writing, please use "the CERT® Coordination Center" or "the CERT®/CC." You should not expand "CERT" into an acronym; but it is appropriate to note in your text that the CERT/CC was originally called the computer emergency response team.

Some history: The present CERT Coordination Center grew from a small computer emergency response team formed at the SEI by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) in 1988. The small team grew quickly and expanded its activities. As our work evolved, so did our name.

http://www.cert.org/faq/cert_faq.html#A2

<pssst....newbies....go there...read....learn... ;) >

Hummm, now the real question for you.
1) How many people knw why the Computer Emergency Responce Team was started?
2) Why did they officially change their name to CERT/CC instead of Computer Emergency Responce Team?

Extra Credit) Why do I keep typing out Computer Emergency Responce Team if this isn't part of my word count in irc?