By Wendy Zamora
Social engineering is nothing new. It's a tool of psychological manipulation that's been used since the dawn of man. Why? To influence people into taking action that might not be in their best interest.
Sometimes it's fairly harmless, like a child sweet-talking his mom in order to get extra candy. (I'm a victim of this one.) Many times, however, social engineering is used for nefarious purposes.
There are classic examples of social engineering at play throughout human history. Confidence tricks were first used by charmers in the 19th century to con people into trusting others with their valuables. (They should not have trusted…the charmers made off with the goods.) Psychological manipulation, otherwise known as propaganda, influenced droves of people during World War II to go out and buy war bonds. And advertising subtly hints that you're not pretty enough until you buy this product.
Social engineering taps into the human psyche by exploiting powerful emotions such as fear, urgency, curiosity, sympathy, or the strongest feels of them all: the desire for free stuff.
Which is why cyber criminals have caught on.
Cyber crooks use this dangerous weapon to get at the weakest link: us. They know that the easiest way to penetrate a system is to go after the user, not the computer. "Attacking the human element has always been a favorite," says Jean-Phillip Taggart, Senior Security Researcher at Malwarebytes. "Why use some hard technical flaw to acquire a password when you can simply ask the user for it?"
In fact, psychological cyber attacks are on the rise. "We are seeing an increase of blended attacks that rely on a combination of social engineering and malicious software," says Taggart. For example, a popular social engineering tactic is the technical support scam. An alert pop-up will appear on the screen that tells the user he is infected and needs to download a malware application. The user, fearful of infection, will download the fake antivirus or anti-malware application that is instead a vehicle for delivering malware.
So how are the criminals distributing their social engineering schemes? Here are some of the most prevalent forms of social engineering today.
Clickbait
