Social engineering attacks rely on deception, psychological manipulation, and exploiting human traits such as trust, fear, urgency, curiosity, and the desire to be helpful. Attackers manipulate victims into breaking normal security procedures by impersonating trusted individuals, creating false pretexts, or inducing emotional responses that cloud judgment. These attacks commonly involve tactics like phishing, pretexting, baiting, vishing, and spear phishing, which depend heavily on human interaction rather than technical hacking vulnerabilities.
Key Elements Social Engineering Attacks Rely On
- Deception and Psychological Manipulation : Attackers deceive victims by pretending to be legitimate persons or entities and exploit emotions like fear, urgency, curiosity, and trust to induce actions they normally wouldn’t take.
- Human Interaction and Behavior Exploitation : These attacks depend on influencing people to voluntarily disclose confidential information or provide access, rather than exploiting software or hardware vulnerabilities.
- Techniques Include :
- Phishing and spear phishing: Using emails or messages that appear trustworthy to obtain sensitive information.
- Pretexting: Creating a believable scenario or identity to extract information.
- Baiting and quid pro quo: Offering something enticing in exchange for information or access.
- Vishing and smishing: Using phone calls and SMS to trick victims.
In summary, social engineering attacks rely primarily on manipulating human psychology through deception, trust-building, and emotional manipulation to trick people into compromising security.
