As I alluded to in a past post, I have been working on my GCIH Gold paper for the past 6 months. Well, I submitted it last month, and just found out that it has been accepted/passed! This means that I now have my GCIH Gold certification. I will be working on my GSEC Gold certification next.
As for the paper itself, I decided to do original research on social engineering on social networks–specifically, on the amount of information that people give up on the “harmless” quizzes they take on social networks like Facebook.
Below is the abstract: (You can find the paper online here)
Social engineering for identity theft has always been around. But now, with the advent of
social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, and a host of others, it has become
easier than ever to harvest personal information from unsuspecting targets. This paper
looks into just how much personal information can be gathered by the seeminglyharmless
“What type of personality are you?” quizzes that are so prevalent on social
networking sites. The paper will then look at what the information could be used for, and
how to protect against this particular vector of social engineering.
-Josh
Defensive Depth 
Great job! I considered going out for a GSEC cert a few years ago, but never followed through. Keep us up to date with your progress.
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