Social engineering is a widely recognized term in the field of cybersecurity. Unlike traditional methods that exploit security system vulnerabilities, social engineering targets human factors to extract information. Social engineering, or social attacks, involves hackers using psychological manipulation to extract information or convince victims to perform specific actions.
Common Social Engineering Attack Chains:
1. Targeting Organizations
As today's security systems are heavily fortified, direct attacks on network systems have become exceedingly difficult. Hacker groups often exploit human weaknesses, specifically targeting personnel who possess critical information, including system administrators, IT support staff, HR managers, directors, and executives.
attackers can plant malware to penetrate the system further or directly attack the infrastructure using sensitive information and privileged accounts they have acquired.
2. Targeting Individuals
Unlike organizational attacks, social engineering attacks on individuals focus on the victim's asset or brokerage accounts. This emerging attack chain has recently caused significant financial damage to victims.
Hackers often employ various deceptive scenarios such as invitations, public service support, tax settlement, and legal disputes through phone calls, SMS, emails, and chats to manipulate the victim's psychvictim'snce the victim falls for the trap; hackers can extract account passwords or trick the victim into installing malware or harmful applications, thus stealing their money from bank or brokerage accounts.
3. Types of Social Engineering Attacks
To achieve their goals, hackers use various techniques. Based on the methods and tools used, social engineering attacks can be categorized into three major groups:
- Human Interaction-Based Social Engineering includes impersonation, voice spoofing, eavesdropping, shoulder surfing, rummaging through documents, and misuse of computers.
- Computer-Based Social Engineering: Phishing emails, spam mail, pop-up windows, chat applications, etc.
- Mobile-Based Social Engineering: Phone calls, fake applications, SMS phishing, etc.
4. Preventing Social Engineering Attacks
VPS recommends the following protective measures for customers:
- Educate Yourself: Gain knowledge about common social engineering attack forms and regularly update yourself on cybersecurity through news and media.
- Stay Alert: Be vigilant against impersonation and scams, especially those involving calls, messages, or emails claiming to be from authorities or those containing curious or alarming content.
- Control Personal Information: Monitor your personal information on social media platforms and avoid unthinkingly providing personal details to unknown parties.
- Use Strong Passwords and Two-Factor Authentication (2FA): Create strong passwords and enable 2FA for your online accounts.
- Develop a habit of changing passwords at least every six months.
- Monitor Financial Transactions: Regularly review login and transaction history. If any irregularities are found, contact your service provider's hot provider immediately to lock the account.
Anyone can fall victim to social engineering, which can lead to significant losses for individuals and organizations. Therefore, the most effective way to protect yourself in the digital space is to equip yourself with knowledge about social engineering.
