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Difficulty: MediumSocial Engineering and Threat Types

An IT support technician is troubleshooting a workstation in a corporate office. The user reports that after finding a flash drive in the building parking lot and plugging it into the workstation to identify its owner, the system became sluggish and initiated unauthorized background network connections. Which of the following social engineering threat types best describes this attack vector?

  1. BaitingAnswer
  2. B
    Shoulder surfing
  3. C
    Watering hole attack
  4. D
    Dumpster diving

Answer

Baiting is the social engineering tactic where an attacker leaves malware-laden physical media in a public space to exploit human curiosity.
Baiting occurs when an attacker strategically leaves malware-infected physical media (such as a USB flash drive) in a location where potential victims will find it, relying on human curiosity to persuade the victim to connect the media to a system.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Identify the primary vector used by the attacker.
The attacker left an infected physical flash drive in a public area (parking lot) accessible to company employees.
Classifying the delivery method and human driver reveals the social engineering tactic.
2
Match the observed tactic to standard threat definitions.
Leaving a physical lure to tempt an individual into plugging it into a network computer is defined as baiting.
Baiting leverages victim curiosity or greed by dangling an attractive physical or digital lure.

Key Concept

Social Engineering: Baiting Attack Vector
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Topics

Social Engineering and Threat Types

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