What Is Social Engineering?
Social engineering exploits human error to manipulate data breaches and access sensitive information or valuables. In cyber security threats, these “human hacking” scams are executed on the pretext of unsuspected users. Hackers use social engineering attacks to lure victims into exposing vulnerable data, often through phishing emails or malware infections.
These scams are largely built around how individuals think and act. Once a criminal understands what drives a user’s actions, they can easily trick the user effectively. Thanks to the speed of technology and users’ lack of knowledge, hackers may be favored to achieve their motives. This article provides insights for both small businesses and large corporations.
Before exploring the details, let’s understand the two key social engineering goals.
- Theft: Obtaining key valuables like sensitive credentials, information, access or money.
- Sabotage: Corrupting or disrupting sensitive data to cause potential damage or inconvenience.
According to an estimate, over 70% of data breach activities begin with social engineering attacks like phishing attacks, ransomware or malware infection by compromising the security posture of an organization. Almost 98% of cyber-attacks are the result of social engineering.
How Social Engineering Works and Why It Matters
Table of Contents
As aforementioned, social engineering tactics depend on the strength of interaction between attackers and victims. The attackers tend to motivate the users to compromise their security using tailgating social engineering. They know how to drive the emotions and instincts of people to achieve their targets. Finally, end victims unknowingly go against their good interests. The below-shared attack iterative process introduces criminals with a trusted process to dupe them.
Preparation
Hackers gather valuable background information about you or a large group you are an active part of.
Effective Infiltration
Cybercriminals develop a trust relationship or directly initiate an interaction to prove their legitimacy for further action.
Victim’s Exploitation
Once a certain degree of trust is developed, criminals advance their attack and the attack vector decides the depth of impact.
Disengagement
In the final step, the hacker disengages once the targeted goal is accomplished.
- It may involve a single email or take more time, potentially even a human interaction. Ultimately, it results in deliberate information sharing or exposing yourself to dangerous malware infections through malicious attachments.
- Many employees and consumers pay no heed. Just a few pieces of sensitive data can give hackers seamless access to multiple files and networks.
- On the pretext of IT support personnel, criminals can steal your sensitive money, private details, and more.
- In 2021, Google recorded over 2 million phishing websites and the average cost after a data breach is $150.
Characteristics of Social Engineering Attempts
Social engineering attempts revolve around the attacker’s persuasion and tactics based on cognitive biases to launch the attack. Most attacks are executed by misleading the victim into the following behaviors.
Emotional Manipulation
Attackers are experienced in heightening the emotions of victims. It provides them with an edge in any interaction. It can easily forge a situation tilted to take irrational or risky actions you otherwise wouldn’t. This enhanced emotional state benefits the hacker.
Increased emotional states, such as fear, curiosity, anger, or excitement, often work in the hacker’s favor.
Sense of Urgency
Time-bound opportunities or requests serve as a trusted tool in a hacker’s arsenal. The sense of urgency can motivate you to compromise yourself under the guise of serious notification or an opportunity that requires prompt attention. You may also be exposed to a reward or prize that may impact your social engineering assessment ability.
Posing an Authoritative Figure
Beyond any doubt, people trust or fear authoritative figures. Social engineering attacks best utilize these instincts with texts that appear to be from political figures or public agencies. This is how attackers play on these tactics to gain their ill objectives.
Appealing to Curiosity
Hackers can also appeal to the victim’s nature of being curious about a message. It often appears to be from a known person, technical assistance from a networking site, or participation request in a survey. This is how they inject malware in the form of a spoofed link to a forged website.
Appealing to Greed
Another trick hackers often employ is to misuse the greedy instincts of the users. They may offer a financial offer in exchange for the user’s account credentials and other private information. A small advance amount is a significant way of social engineering that appeals to the recipient’s greed. This type of attack from an authority figure can be an apt move to generate a sense of urgency.
Common Social Engineering Attacks
A sponge overview explains the presence of social engineering elements in almost every type of cybersecurity attack. Using an alter ego trick, hackers can amplify the impact of any type of social engineering attack. It can easily affect you digitally through mobile attacks and desktop devices alike.
Some of the most common forms of social engineering assaults are ready to turn on the alert signs, highlighting the need for potential security defenders to circumvent cyber incidents.
Baiting
It is a cyber tactic to abuse your instinct to coax you into easily exposing your details to a cyber attacker. The manipulation methods are potentially used to exploit your sensitive data. The attacker normally leverages malware to infect your device. The popular methods of baiting involve USB drives and email attachments including free offers or scam-free software.
Phishing
Phishing cyber attackers pose as reliable individuals or institutions to trick you into exposing your personal credentials, information, and valuables. Attackers using phishing techniques target victims in two ways: spear phishing and spam phishing. Whether the attack is executed through direct communication or via a fraudulent website, any valuable information you share ends up in the scammer’s possession.
Phishing attacks commonly occur through voice calls, SMS, angler phishing, in-session scams, and URL scams.
Pretexting
It is all about using the deceptive, forged and fraudulent identity as the ‘’pretext’’ for building trust. This criminal method involves directly impersonating a vendor or a premises employee. One thing this approach requires is the interaction of the attacker with you proactively. The next step after building a trust level is to prove everything legitimate for your targeted exploitation.
Tailgating
Piggybacking, also known as tailgating attacks, involves towing a legitimate staff member into a restricted or unauthorized area. Attackers often exploit social courtesy to gain access to privileged zones, making others believe they are authorized to be there.
Scareware
It is a dreadful malware employed to frighten you into taking a doubtful action. The alarming warnings report dummy malware infections. It may also claim that one of your sensitive accounts has been compromised. Resultantly, this harmful malware forces you to buy scam cybersecurity software.
Quid Pro Quo
This term screams ‘’a favor in return for a favor’’. In the context of quid pro quo, it means the barter of your personal data for some compensation or other reward. Unverified or unauthorized research gateways might expose your sensitive data to this type of attack. It begins with low investment on your end and ends with data theft without any reward for you.
What are the Best Social Engineering Defenses?
Social engineering attacks are notoriously difficult to stop at the root because they rely more on human intervention than on technological systems. The attack surface varies depending on the organization’s size; in a larger company, even one employee’s mistake can jeopardize the integrity of the entire enterprise.
Let’s explore the steps experts recommend for improving incident response and mitigating data breach events.
Cyber Security Training
Many users are unaware of how to track social engineering attacks. In the modern age, users frequently trade personal information for digital services, they pay the least attention before surrendering mundane information. Professional awareness training can help employees protect their sensitive information.
Access Control Protocols
Another important step in protecting security controls is applying a zero-trust security approach and adaptive authentication. With effective application security, it is easy to limit cybercriminals to sabotage the sensitive data stored in the device applications.
Keep Your Software Updated
If you want to secure your device software, it is necessary to update it before time. It ensures quick fixes. Don’t delay the updates; otherwise, the exposed security holes will be the hackers’ targets. Prioritize the device’s security against socially engineered malware attacks.
Conduct Penetration Testing
Another potential practice is to ensure pen testing. Different penetration testing stages are involved ensuring penetration testing and red teaming are processes successful against social engineering attacks. It begins with threat modelling, leading to vulnerability assessment for key identification of key security loopholes. It helps to fix them before any damage.
Keep Devices Secure with MFA
Devices and networks are the primary targets of criminals. To keep them secure, ensure your devices remain threat-free by implementing multi-factor authentication. Using strong passwords and a finger-scanning approach are effective response solutions.
Advanced detection and cloud security strategies can quickly neutralize potential risks despite the elevated threat levels.
FAQ
What is the Difference between Phishing and Social Engineering?
Phishing is a type of social engineering attack where deceptive emails and websites play the role of tricking people into exploiting their personal details. Whereas, social engineering is a broader term encapsulating an assortment of security tactics to misuse human psychology for dangerous intentions.
What is the Perfect Protective Measure against Social Engineering?
Comprehensive awareness and security training programs are helpful measures against prevalent social engineering attacks.
How do Hackers Choose their Victims?
Hackers consider multiple factors while choosing their victims, including vulnerability, reconnaissance options, and effective phishing campaigns to access personal account credentials, financial details, corporate networks, and more.
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