Identity fraud and pretexting

- [Instructor] Identity crimes are insidious. Instead of attacking large corporations, attackers target individuals, attempting to steal their identities to open fraudulent accounts, steal funds, or engage in other illegal activity. The statistics around identity crimes are alarming. The Federal Trade Commission's Consumer Sentinel Network tracks fraud, identity theft, and related crimes, and they've seen an enormous uptick in reports of these crimes in recent years, as you can see on this public dashboard. Pretexting is one of the main techniques used in identity fraud. In a pretexting attack, the attacker contacts a third-party company pretending to be the consumer and attempts to gain access to that consumer's account. Pretexting is often the first step in a larger identity crime. For example, let's imagine that an attacker, Angry Andy, is targeting a consumer, Naive Norm. Angry Andy wants to gain access to Norm's…