ICS0018 Hands-on seminars

The idea

The hands-on seminars are a task for teams of three (initially based on Kristjan's ScamLab materials). The goal is to learn about different scams in a safe(ish) but real environment. A little side quest is to waste scammers' time so that they can't use it on actual victims. A successful presentation will result in passing the course if the attendance criteria (5 out of 8 lectures and seminars) is met. To register a presentation, please team up and register below, in your chosen time slot. There are limited presentation slots - first come, first served! (note: as people sign up, we will probably have to cram as many presentations as possible into each seminar - but the space is not infinite, we will have more or less 90 minutes for each).

Note: this time, we went from paired work to 3-person teams due to the number of people in the course (the seminar time would not have been enough for pairs).

The Task

Step 1: Create a fake identity and honeypot email account for engaging with scammers. Other platforms are also welcome, as long as you are able to protect your identity.

Step 2: Distribute the email address on shady or spammy sites, such as social media, online forums, etc. Some tips can be found here https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-get-scam-emails

Step 3: Wait for the scams to start rolling in.

Step 4: Engage! First select if you're going to use a naïve or aggressive approach.

If you don't manage to get any scammers to directly email your newly created address, go look in your regular mailbox, in the spam folder, ask friends & family, etc. NB! Before replying to any of those "crowdsourced" scam emails from your fake account, be sure to delete the address it was originally sent to.

Some tips for safety:

1. Never reveal your (or anyone else's) real personal information to the scammers. Make up something realistic.
2. Never open any links in emails unless you're in a protected sandbox environment.
3. NEVER give out any real financial information, account information, or passwords.
4. Always use Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA). Even on your fake accounts.

Here's the grand prize: if you manage to engage with at least 3 scammers for a message chain of 5 or more (they respond to at least 2 of your messages in the same thread), and present your findings at one of the seminars, you pass the course. It's not as easy as it might first seem.

Alternative task

An alternative way to pass is to educate people in your social network, friends, family, coworkers, etc about scams, how to spot them, how to avoid them, what to do if you're already a victim. If you want to use this option, please contact Kaido (over e-mail or MS Teams) and suggest how would you do it.

1. pre-survey (what do the people know about the topic and what they want to learn - can be done either well ahead in writing or orally before the event, but should be documented)
2. training description and syllabus
3. training material (typically, presentation slides)
4. some photos of the training event (showing that it actually happened)
5. post-survey (what did the people learn and how did they evaluate the training)

The materials listed above should be compressed to a single archive file (e.g. .zip) and sent to Kristjan (via e-mail, Teams or other channel - Google Drive, Dropbox etc) before presenting them in the seminar.

Alternative task 2

Create two spread phishing scenarios:

1. One dynamic, using a ChatGPT prompt to compose the phishing email. The prompt may include context such as the employee’s email address, job title, communication language, country of residence, company name, and industry. GPT has internet access and may use real supplementary information to compose the message. The email must be generated using a single-shot prompt.
2. The second scenario is a static HTML email, where the same parameters can be used.

Email will be sent out from existing Phishbite domain pool. Student can define which of the domains will be used.

For both templates, when presenting the template, explain why this particular phishing email might be effective. What factors is the phisher exploiting?

Based on the created scenarios, each phishing email will be sent to 50 randomly selected email addresses of Phishbite client employees.

Student will get overview of their Phishing emails performance based on the real user testing data.

They will also get additional feedback from Phishbite team. Top performers may get an offer for an internship with PhishBite.

This task is limited to 20 students. Register below.

1. Martten Tiitsma
2. Dmitri Plotnikov
3. Jan Albers
4. your_name_here
5. your_name_here
6. your_name_here
7. your_name_here
8. your_name_here
9. your_name_here
10. your_name_here
11. your_name_here
12. your_name_here
13. your_name_here
14. your_name_here
15. your_name_here
16. your_name_here
17. your_name_here
18. your_name_here
19. your_name_here
20. your_name_here

The Seminars

Seminar 1: Thursday, March 5

• Andres Alexander Jürgenson, Renee Žugov, Kaisa Arge
• ...
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Seminar 2: Thursday, March 12

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• Ayaz Zeynalov, Kuzey Arda Bulut.
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Seminar 3: Thursday, March 19

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• Alirza Zaidov, Mahammad Seyidzada, Onarbay Yusifov
• ...

Seminar 4: Thursday, March 26

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• Ruslana Jankovska, Ellen Marie Lasson, Konstantin Tužikov
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