Social Engineering
Social engineering is the art of working methodically with people. We use this art to prepare you for possible social engineering attacks, which can take place through various mediums and forms. Therefore, our services in this field are just as diverse.
The common feature of these assessments is to be in detailed agreement with the goals and non-goals, as well as constraints of the assessment for the protection of the employees. Since these tests are designed to find new security breaches, a definite non-goal is to attach possible wrongdoing during the assessments to individuals. We are strongly opposed to negative consequences for individuals coined from an assessment. Therefore, we censor content and imagery as much as possible and are in support of a transparent and fair review of the results.
A good starting point for the project planning is already existing training material of your company. Building on these we can design the assessments according to realistic current threats and incorporate your instructional material to foster awareness.
Targeted Phishing Assessments
For this assessment we develop scenarios which are based on risk trends and your personal requirements to get the most out of training your personnel.
This can include general texts or e-mails tailored to your company or groups of individuals within your company (spear phishing). Depending on the requirements the e-mails will include links and/or attachments with code prepared by us. Every assessment is unique and custom-fitted to your induvial needs.
Testing Technical Phishing Protection Measures
In this assessment we challenge your technical protection measures to see if they provide adequate protection against phishing e-mails. We thoroughly test your spam filter, antivirus solutions on the e-mail gateways and clients, endpoint protection software as well as data leakage prevention software.
Voice Phishing Assessments
With the rise of faked telephone calls to convince people to give out information or install malware, it is important to prepare employees for such attacks. We train your employees with fake caller IDs, fake phone numbers and AI-generated voice imitation for such attack scenarios.
CEO Fraud Simulations
CEO fraud describes attacks which target employees by impersonating management personnel and pressuring them into transferring money onto unknown bank accounts. Depending on your means of communications this simulation includes several social engineering tactics and mediums, like e-mail, WhatsApp, MS Teams or phone calls.
USB or Media Dropping
USB devices and even USB cables can contain malware. With this assessment we train your employees’ reaction to unaccounted devices or mediums, such as CDs or USB sticks, and help them understand the dangers of such finds.
Mystery Guest / Physical Awareness Engagements
As so-called mystery guest we visit your company and will try to reach the goals agreed upon with you, like getting access to internal information or IT systems without using specific hacking or physical attacks. The focus lays on social engineering and the security awareness of the employees, especially towards external people. During the assessment we will become more noticeable over time until we are discovered. This allows for an insight on the measurements which are already well implemented and internalised by the employees and offers a positive learning effect for everyone involved at the end.
Internal ISMS Audit 2025
As a company, we undergo regular audits of our ISMS (Information Security Management System). These audits are conducted by an external company to obtain an independent opinion on the functioning...
Future-Proofing Talents at the University of Applied Sciences in Hagenberg
As the cybersecurity industry can only remain strong with committed young talents, promoting knowledge is important to us. That is why our team members regularly give speaking engagements or lect...
BCM Exercise 2025
Effective emergency and crisis management helps prepare for worst-case scenarios. That's why, among other things, we regularly conduct simulations as part of our Business Continuity Management (BCM) p...
References & Case Studies
Energy 
The Pitfalls of Cross-Site Request Forgery
Energy
Two web applications were tested for a company in the energy sector. The focus was on attack options for internal and external accounts within the web applications.
Several cross-site request forgery vulnerabilities were identified during the test within the web applications. With CSRF attacks, commands can be executed in the context of the victim if the victim clicks on a manipulated link. This allows a CSRF attack to change an account password on both internal and external registered users. If successful, this would result in the victim's account being completely compromised.
To prevent CSRF attacks, it must be impossible to prepare a valid request to the web application in advance. This is usually ensured with a random value that changes with every call and is validated on the server side with every received request.
Health 
How Forgotten Functionalities Can Endanger Data Security
Health
A company in the healthcare sector wanted to subject its internal backup infrastructure to a security check. The goal of this test was to check the configuration of the services and the servers belonging to the backup infrastructure.
During the check, port 161/tcp was identified on which an SNMP endpoint was running. Additionally, it was possible to use the community string “public” to find out information about account names, the running services as well as the operating system. The identified operating system version was Microsoft Windows CE version 6.0 (Build 0). This embedded version of the Windows operating system was released in 2006 and has been end-of-life since 2022. An increased risk for this system was identified in connection with other open ports and associated vulnerabilities. Since this was concerning a disk management system, successful attacks could provide access to the company's sensitive data.
It was recommended to shut down services that are no longer in use. During penetration tests, we often find that some endpoints that were in use years ago are no longer being used, but still have the same configuration. If these endpoints are still used, for example to send information about the system to a monitoring application, the service must be secured to prevent third parties from reading the information. We also recommended keeping all systems up-to-date in order to neutralize known vulnerabilities via security patches. In this specific case, the accessibility of the services was additionally restricted at the network level to minimize the risk.
IT Service 
Re-Checks in Pentesting: The Key to Finding What You Missed
IT Service
A security recheck was carried out by us for a global corporation with focus on an application that visualizes complex data structures.
A penetration recheck (or retest) verifies that the security vulnerabilities identified during an initial penetration test have been fixed. After the company has made corrections, the testers check the same areas again and determine whether the previously exploited vulnerabilities are now secure. This recheck ensures that the remediation was effective and that new vulnerabilities were not inadvertently introduced. Rechecks are essential for maintaining security posture and compliance as they confirm that the risk level has been reduced. Without rechecks, unresolved vulnerabilities could persist, leaving systems unprotected and negating the goals and investments of the original security review.
After the initial recheck, the parts of the application that had no vulnerabilities in the previous penetration test were also examined. Several Reflected Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities were identified, which would allow attackers to perform operations in the victim's context if a victim clicked on a manipulated link. In order to prevent injection vulnerabilities, such as XSS, it is recommended to verify any input to the application and to remove the special characters.