Social Engineering Task # 6

1.         My task was to “Use shoulder surfing to eavesdrop on 5 text conversations see what you can learn”.

2.         First of all I planned about how to accomplish this task. I wanted to be at a crowded place where I could easily accomplish my task without anybody taking notice of me.

a.         To get my job done, I decided to go to a show in downtown. I took a crowded, train, I was standing by the door and I saw one young lady sitting and playing with her phone. That was a great opportunity for me to do my task, she was texting about her personal stuff.

b.         I reached to that show venue and we had still some time to start that show. I purposely sat on almost last row so that I could watch people and their phone activities. I could catch up text conversation of a woman sitting in front of me.

c.         My next target was also sitting next to that lady and kind of that was easy.

d.         My another target was in subway again, while coming back from that show. I came to station and skipped one train because that wasn’t crowded. After few minutes I took another little crowded train. I used the same old trick, stood right by the door where one young man was sitting and playing with his phone. I was able to see his text conversation, he was too busy with his thing. All of sudden, I felt like one couple sitting right  side of the boy took notice of whatever I was doing. I wasn’t very comfortable so got off the train in the next first stop. That was little embarrassing but job done.

e.         My final target himself bumped onto me. I was at work thinking about my task, then was approached by one of my colleague with some issue with his cellphone. I thought myself lucky, played around with his phone pretending to fix that and quickly looked onto his texts for a moment. That was not cool but no harm no foul. 

3.         My Strategy was pretty effective, to find some place where I am in position of advantage in a crowded area. I chose a comfortable position for me to get my task done; like standing or sitting at back, so that I can have unobstructed view of target’s cell phone activities. Another strategy was to target unknown people so that even if I get caught doing so, that will be one time embarrassment rather than having to deal with long term embarrassment.

4.         My moral stake wasn’t great because I was somehow invading other’s privacy for sake of completing my task.

5.         We must be aware of our environment especially in public places. We shouldn’t be texting private and secure information. At times public texting may reveal so many private stuffs which might not be very suitable to reveal and might hamper on personal security. Hackers can use personal information to impersonate anybody and that might ruin other person’s life.

6.         I didn’t feel great about doing this assignment but learnt that if we are committed we can easily get personal information from not so alert people. It is safe to say that we can’t blindly trust anybody, it’s not a good idea to have too much text conversation in public places.