Social engineering relies on human interaction and manipulation to gain access or information through psychological attacks. It works by exploiting human weaknesses like insecurity, authority, urgency or familiarity. There are physical techniques like impersonation or tailgating and digital methods like phishing emails, spam, hoaxes or hijacking common website misspellings to trick users into giving away access or sensitive information. Social engineering is an ongoing tactic that requires constant vigilance against evolving methods of deception targeting human vulnerabilities.

1. SOCIAL ENGINEERING

2. SOCIAL ENGINEERING
• Psychological attacking
• Non-technical method of intrusion
that relies on:
• human interaction
• trickery
• Manipulation
• Exploiting the weakest link in the
chain

3. SOCIAL ENGINEERING
• An approach of exploiting and exposing peoples insecurities through a manner
of psychological attacks or warfare:
• Displaying Confidence – the key attribute in any socially engineering tactic
• Act like you own it and people will believe
• Authority – Impersonating an authority figure or citing one
• “Do you know who I am…!”
• Intimidation – To frighten and coerce by threatening
• “What’s your name, I am going to contact your manager”
• Consensus – Influenced by what others do or wanting to satisfy a request
• “I talked with someone before and then were very accommodating with handling this situation”
• Urgency/Scarcity – Immediate action required
• “I am leaving to go to the company headquarters and need to get that file”
• Familiarity – Victim is well-known or well received (flattery, compliments)
• “I remember how helpful you were a couple of weeks ago”

4. TYPES OF SOCIAL ENGINEERING ATTACKS
PHYSICAL
• Impersonation
• Pretending to be someone you are
not
• Never give information out
• Dumpster Diving
• Digging through trash to obtain
information
• Tailgating and Shoulder Surfing
• Waiting for an action to take place
and then capitalizes on the result
• Security door
DIGITAL
• Phishing
• False information in a digital format in order to
solicit information from a user.
• Spam
• Nonsense emails that circumvent filters to try and
deliver payloads
• Hoaxes
• Email impersonations to convince individuals to
undermine the security of the system
• URL hijacking (Typo Squatting)
• Scams that take advantage on common
misspellings
• Watering Hole Attack
• Setting malware on sites where specific groups of
individuals congregate
• Reverse Social Engineering
• Attacker gets victim to contact them
• Social Engineering is a game of cat and mouse