The Internet and social networking are essential parts of our lives today. From how and where we work to who we interact with. But enjoying these benefits is getting harder and harder due to cybercriminals actively lurking in the digital world.
Cyber-attackers exploit the existing loopholes in the cyber-security framework to steal people’s money, information, or both. For that reason, having skills that make it easy to defend yourself against possible social engineering techniques is vital.
Social engineering techniques are cyber-security threats implied by criminals to access cloud resources and corporate networks. Online attackers increasingly apply sophisticated, deceptive, and manipulative techniques to cause people to submit their sensitive information. The best approach to avoiding these attacks is teaching yourself key strategies of what criminals do.
Social Engineering Stages
A social engineering problem isn’t something that happens abruptly but in stages. When cybercriminals, for example, choose to do voice phishing, they will have to go through all four steps. You can stop the con at any stage when you notice it. Here are the four stages social engineering undertakes:
- Preparation: Attackers begin by collecting data about their victims using telephone calls, text messages, dark web, emails, social media, etc.
- Infiltration: In this phase, an attacker will try to gain their victim’s trust by pretending to be someone else. They could masquerade as customer service, executives, marketers, etc.
- Exploitation: This is the level where the attacker persuades the victim to tell them sensitive information, including bank account details, work account logins and passwords, etc.
- Disengagement: After the third step, the attacker cuts all communication with the victim, performs the attack, and disappears.
8 Common Social Engineering Techniques
Cybercriminals apply plenty of social engineering techniques to manipulate their victims. As such, be on the watch to recognize them when the trick is being played on you.
- Phishing
Phishing is among the most used social engineering techniques. Scammers use this approach to gain trust, ask for sensitive information, or send links containing malware. The most common mediums used by cybercriminals for phishing include emails, websites, and social media.
- Baiting
Under this technique, scammers lure their victims through fake promises. Due to its nature, it has also been referred to as a “quid pro quo” attack, meaning you’re scammed to give information after being promised something of value in return. Many people fall for this type of social engineering attack because they believe the person on the other end is genuine and will keep their side of the bargain.
- Tailgating
Tailgating is a social engineering technique that involves physically breaching a certain location. Simply put, this is a break in allowing unauthorized persons to access secure facilities, bypassing all security mechanisms. When these individuals get access, they steal or destroy information. In an organization, possible attackers include saboteurs, thieves, competitors, disgruntled employees, etc.
- Pretexting
Pretexting allows an attacker to begin the malicious process by making a fake profile and background story. The intention is to manipulate the victim into giving access to their accounts or sharing their sensitive information. Attackers pretend to be someone known to the victim as a friend, family member, boss, customer service, or colleague to gain trust. They later ask for personal information and account details, which they use to rob the victim.
- Scareware
Scareware is malware used by scammers in social engineering to cause anxiety, threat perception, or shock. This type of malware is intended to manipulate victims into buying software they never wanted in the first place. The malware creates a fake threat, the pop-up window of which warns users about the detection of a potential threat and forces them to buy a solution.
At their worst, the purchase is automatically renewed, unknowingly taking funds from users. Usually, scammers place this malware in the coding of a webpage as downloads, updates, or software purchases. Besides being forced to buy the software, the malware could also steal the victim’s data, including login and password details.
- Watering Hole
A watering hole entails launching an attack from a genuine website with numerous visits from potential victims. In most cases, attackers compromise a website by planting malicious code downloadable through a backdoor Trojan. Such attacks allow the criminal to control the victim’s gadget remotely.
Unlike other attacks, only highly skilled software developers perform this type of social engineering technique. They identify a software vulnerability that the vendor has yet to discover and exploit it to target the software users. Such software weaknesses that are yet to be discovered by the vendor are also known as zero-day exploits. The watering hole attacks are some of the hardest to protect users from since the attacker is the first to notice the loophole.
- Cache Poisoning & DNS Spoofing
Cache poisoning is an attack on a network. It injects falsified information into a website cache intended to provide malicious HTTP responses. In some quarters, it has also been referred to as DNS poisoning and is closely related to DNS spoofing.
DNS stands for Domain Name System. A DNS spoofing is an attack where cyber-criminals use a poisoned cache to redirect users from legitimate to malicious servers. The two attacks are highly deceptive and expose users to information theft and malware infection.
- Whaling Attack
A whaling attack is a type of phishing that is also known as spear phishing. It involves the attacker masquerading as an IT consultant and sending emails to employees with access to sensitive information. It is more intense and complicated compared to other types of social engineering techniques. Criminals email workers pretending to notice a breach that requires an intervention. Once the email is opened, they get access to the system.
How to Avoid Social Engineering Techniques
Although there is no specific way to avoid social engineering techniques, combining several approaches could guarantee safety. Here are ways to prevent the unwanted threats:
- Teach yourself: It is critical to teach yourself about social engineering threats and how to avoid them. Informed individuals are always prepared for a possible attack and are highly cautious.
- Use antivirus software: One of the best ways to deal with malware is using legitimate and tested antivirus software.
- Avoid sharing information with people you don’t know: Only share information with people you know and trust. If you have doubts about someone, run a background check on them on Nuwber.
- Don’t click on popups: If you didn’t plan to open a website or download something, don’t just click it because it popped up.
- Regularly change passwords: You never know who gained access to your accounts. Changing your password after some time or when you detect possible intrusion could save you.
