The Most Common Social Engineering Attacks

Many years ago, one of the world’s most popular hacker Kevin Mitnick explained in his book “The Art of Deception” the power of social engineering techniques, today we are aware that social engineering can be combined with hacking to power insidious attacks.

Let’s consider for example social media and mobile platforms; they are considered powerful attack vectors for various categories of threat actors because they allow hitting large audience instantaneously.

Most of the attacks exploiting both paradigms are effective because leverage the concept of “trust” on which social networks are built.

Let’s see in detail which are most common social engineering attacks used to targets users.

Phishing

Phishing attacks are the most common type of attacks leveraging social engineering techniques. Attackers use emails, social media and instant messaging, and SMS to trick victims into providing sensitive information or visiting malicious URL in the attempt to compromise their systems.

 

Read the full cool article here.

Source: NFOSEC INSTITUTE

Topics: Social Engineering, Speaking Engagements, The Art of Deception, watering hole, personal data theft, piggybacking, Quid Pro Quo attacks, tailgating, whaling attack, cyber espionage, Baiting, phishing, pretexting, Kevin Mitnick, malicious emails

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