Chapter 33. Antisocial Network Engineering

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Trickery and treachery are the practices of fools that have not the wits enough to be honest

Benjamin Franklin

As we are so often reminded, we are all human and capable of making mistakes. In this regard, the virtual world is no different from the physical one, and it's what attackers are counting on. If you zoomed through Chapter 32, you might have missed the tidbit that 50–80% of network device outages, which disrupt the availability of the network, are attributable to benign human factors.[340]

Sometimes these network compromises are the product of poor management practices or inadequate checks and balances. They could be the result of data retrieved from a lost or stolen device, which can easily happen. Consider that 22% of employees[341] carry corporate data on portable storage devices outside of the office, or take the case of the Bank of New York Mellon employee who lost a backup tape containing the financial records of approximately 10 million customers while en route to have it destroyed.[342] Oops. The attackers could be playing the numbers game, throwing their nets wide in hopes of catching unwitting victims. Like when your teenager goes to a site recommended by one of her friends and downloads strange stuff that ends up dragging down the home network every time she boots up. And then there are the exploits conducted by people ...

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