Social Engineering
“There’s no technology today that can’t be overcome through social engineering.” (Kevin Mitnick, former hacker and social engineering expert)
Even with the best technical security precautions, every company has a risk factor that is difficult to control: the human one.
To get hold of important data or gain access, a hacker needs to understand not only computers but also people.
What exactly is social engineering and how can you protect yourself? We will answer key questions about this in the article below.
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The method is not something that only occurs on the Internet, but a scam tactic that has been used for many decades. One of the best-known ploys is the “grandparent” scam, where a fraudster telephones an elderly person and passes themselves off as a relative in desperate need of money (German police program for crime prevention, 2017).
Criminals also regularly use social engineering for financial gain through online dating services. A seemingly young, attractive woman will contact a man who is obviously looking for a new partner. The imposter plays their single-woman-in-love role well enough to win the victim’s trust in a relatively short time. Then the criminal asks the victim to help them with money for something like visiting their “new partner” – after which they often cut off contact.
Phishing: the impersonal form of social engineering
A less laborious type of social engineering is the classic phishing email. This usually involves fake PayPal emails containing a link to a simulated website so much like the original that it is difficult to notice any deception. The email will ask people to update or verify their login details on this website, but doing so delivers the data directly into the hands of the scammers.
Unlike a personalized email, these messages are highly generic. The classic phishing email is based on a simple and less costly method, which means huge volumes of emails are sent. Even if only a fraction of the recipients fall for the ruse, hackers will have found the social engineering attack worthwhile..
Learn everything about phishing at our phishing page.
Social engineering needs no programming expertise
Technical obstacles are overcome simply by employing psychological tricks, with hackers exploiting people as the weakest link in the IT security chain. Even the most secure vault in the world can be opened if the access details are handed over to unauthorized individuals. This saves the criminal a great deal of technical effort and lessens the chance of them being detected by IT security measures.
If you had replied to the email from Felix above, the hacker would have infiltrated the company network within a few minutes. No effort, no programming skill, no great risk. Criminals leverage employees’ fundamental trust and curiosity in order to steal data or money.
Google phishing quiz: Your free awareness check
A few weeks ago, Google created a security quiz in response to the sharp growth in phishing attacks. This quiz challenges you to try and spot a phishing email. Can you see through any social engineering attack? Find out now!
Additional safeguards with Hornetsecurity Advanced Threat Protection
Classic phishing emails will generally be identified and weeded out immediately by a good spam filter. A personalized social engineering attack, however, is not much different from a perfectly ordinary email. These unwanted emails will therefore end up in your inbox in spite of spam filtering.
Advanced Threat Protection goes a step further: various deep filters and heuristic detection mechanisms will uncover almost any fake email. With the help of AI, the filter learns from every attack and thus improves its detection rate on a daily basis. Advanced Threat Protection covers many of the above points completely automatically.
Ultimately, though, you should always question every email and be cautious about sharing data.
Visit out knowledge base
Did you like our contribution from the knowledge database on Social Engineering? Then you can access the overview page of our knowledge database here. There you can learn more about topics such as Phishing, Brute Force Attacks, GoBD, Cyber Kill Chain, Crypto Mining and Ransomware.
What’s behind social engineering?
Social engineering is all about manipulating individuals on an interpersonal level. It involves the hacker trying to gain their victim’s trust and persuade them to reveal confidential information, for example, or to share credit card details and passwords.