Five types of social engineering attacks According to the Verizon 2021 Data Breach Report social engineering has increased since 2017. More recently social engineering has seen a meteotic rise in what Verizon calls misrepresentation tactics which increased 15-fold during the Covid-19 pandemic. [1] Social engineering methods are constantly evolving with the channels and technologies available to scammers.
As phishing has expanded beyond click here for a price emails to smishing via text scammers have become more sophisticated in their use of social engineering. Thanks to social media and the sale of databases whatsapp mobile number list of stolen information on the dark web cybercriminals are able to acquire vast amounts of data to launch their attacks. Their approaches include Whaling Just like spear phishing uses information to target a user with a personalized message whaling goes one step further and targets a big fish in the company.
For this reason it is also known as CEO or CFO scam. Pretexting Typically pretexting is an email that appears to be from a vendor or partner trying to solve an urgent problem. However under this pretext the scammers try to elicit passwords or confidential information from the user. For example the scammer can send an email posing as a customer who needs access to a business account to pay a bill. Quid pro quo As the name suggests this type of attack involves an exchange of information or services. The scammer can pose as an administrator and try to fix a technical problem by asking the employee for access to their computer.