Examples of social engineering range from
phishing attacks where victims are tricked into
providing confidential information, vishing attacks where an urgent and official sounding voice mail convinces victims to act quickly or suffer severe consequences, or physical tailgating attacks that rely on trust to gain …
- Phishing. Phishing is the most common type of social engineering attack. …
- Spear Phishing. A social engineering technique known as Spear Phishing can be assumed as a subset of Phishing. …
- Vishing. …
- Pretexting. …
- Baiting. …
- Tailgating. …
- Quid pro quo.
- Phishing. …
- Watering hole. …
- Whaling attack. …
- Pretexting. …
- Baiting and quid pro quo attacks.
Phishing
. As one of the most popular social engineering attack types, phishing scams are email and text message campaigns aimed at creating a sense of urgency, curiosity or fear in victims.
Social engineering defined
For a social engineering definition, it’s
the art of manipulating someone to divulge sensitive or confidential information
, usually through digital communication, that can be used for fraudulent purposes.
The most common form of social engineering attack is
phishing
. Phishing attacks exploit human error to harvest credentials or spread malware, usually via infected email attachments or links to malicious websites.
- Phishing. …
- Vishing and Smishing. …
- Pretexting. …
- Baiting. …
- Tailgating and Piggybacking. …
- Quid Pro Quo. …
- Cyber Threats Beyond Social Engineering.
Social engineering is a term that encompasses a broad spectrum of malicious activity. For the purposes of this article, let’s focus on the
five
most common attack types that social engineers use to target their victims. These are phishing, pretexting, baiting, quid pro quo and tailgating.
According to a 2018 study,
17 percent of people fall victim to social engineering attacks
. That means that close to two out of every ten employees you have will unwittingly compromise his or her workstation, or get the entire company’s network in trouble.
Social engineering is illegal
. Social engineering attacks can happen to an individual online or in person. Identity theft is a social engineering attack. There are many precautions you can take from creating a two-step authentication system for your accounts to using a different password for each account.
Social engineering is
a manipulation technique that exploits human error to gain private information, access, or valuables
. In cybercrime, these “human hacking” scams tend to lure unsuspecting users into exposing data, spreading malware infections, or giving access to restricted systems.
Contact spamming and email hacking
This type of attack involves hacking into an individual’s email or social media accounts to gain access to contacts. Contacts may be told the individual has been mugged and lost all their credit cards and then ask to wire money to a money transfer account.
Pretexting is a type of social engineering attack that involves a situation, or pretext,
created by an attacker in order to lure a victim into a vulnerable situation and to trick them into giving private information
, specifically information that the victim would typically not give outside the context of the pretext.
Social engineering is a psychological attack against a company or an organization that aims
to exploit people’s natural tendency to trust others
.
Kevin Mitnick
is an American computer security consultant, author and hacker, best known for his high-profile 1995 arrest and later five-year conviction for various computer and communications-related crimes.
This form of social engineering often begins by
gaining access to an email account or another communication account on an IM client, social network, chat, forum, etc
. They accomplish this either by hacking, social engineering, or simply guessing really weak passwords.
