Social engineering attacks are growing rapidly in numbers and sophistication. Data suggests that 98% of cyberattacks rely on social engineering! A 40% year-on-year increase was seen in ransomware attacks that were socially engineered! 43% of IT professionals said that they had been at the receiving end of social engineering schemes in the last year! What are social engineering cyberattacks? Why should you be concerned?
Read on to learn more about social engineering attacks and ways to prevent them.
What are Social Engineering Attacks?
Social engineering is a broad term used to refer to malicious activities that exploit human errors/ emotions/ weaknesses/ lack of knowledge to manipulate unsuspecting victims to take unsafe actions. These attacks rely on actual interaction between attackers and victims. The attackers coax victims into compromising themselves rather than relying on brute force methods.
Social engineering attacks, at their core, are not cyberattacks; they are acts of psychological manipulation aimed at gaining the trust of targets, getting them to lower their guard and persuading them into making security errors such as giving away sensitive information, downloading malware, clicking on unsafe links and so on.
The common types of social engineering attacks:
- Phishing and its many types
- Spear Phishing
- Tailgating/ Piggybacking
- Baiting
- Confidence Tricks
- Pretexting
- Scareware
Dangers and Impacts
What makes social engineering attacks particularly dangerous is that not everyone needs to be targeted. Just one successfully manipulated user could divulge enough information to trigger massive attacks and severe damage to the organization.
Relying on the element of human error, these attacks lure unsuspecting victims into downloading malware, sharing credentials, transferring money, clicking on fraudulent ads/ spam links, purchasing products, etc. Successful social engineering attacks could lead to identity theft, malware attacks, ransomware attacks, reputational damage, data theft, service disruption and unauthorized access, among others.
The Lifecycle of Social Engineering
- Preparation/ Reconnaissance Stage: The attacker identifies victims and spends ample time and resources to gather key information about them. The attacker also gathers all necessary background information about them such as potential points of entry, security weaknesses, etc. Based on this, they will decide the attack methods.
- Deception/ Infiltration Stage: The attacker engages with the targets to gain their trust. They spin stories or make convincing arguments to lure the targets.
- Exploitation Stage: The attacker tries to take control of the interaction and appeal to the target’s weaknesses (fear, guilt, sadness, curiosity, etc.). They take advantage of the unsuspecting victim to advance the attack and get the victim into doing their bidding.
- Disengagement Stage: Once the user has taken the desired action, the attacker will disengage and bring the interaction to a natural close. They will also remove traces of malware, cover their tracks, etc.
This attack lifecycle could be as short as a phone call/ a single email interaction or take place over months on social media chats. They may or may not involve face-to-face or voice interactions.
Traits of Social Engineering Attacks
Regardless of the type of social engineering attack, all contain four key traits:
- Heightened emotions: Leveraging emotional manipulation to convince targets into taking risky actions, they otherwise wouldn’t.
- Trust and confidence: Building trust and confidence is at the core of social engineering. The attackers do not want you to doubt them and will, thus, craft messages that are easy to believe.
- Urgency: The messages are carefully crafted to create a sense of urgency. They will highlight the time-sensitive nature of opportunities or requests.
- Persuasion: The message being conveyed is always compelling and extremely persuasive.
Prevention Tips
Given that humans are the weak links in security, one of the best ways to prevent social engineering attacks is providing continuous education to users, employees including high-level executives and privileged administrators, and other key stakeholders.
- They must be made aware of best practices in secure communications, account management, network usage and general cyber hygiene.
- They must know which emails to open, attachments to download and links to click.
- They must know when to raise red flags and how to detect and report potential scams.
- They must exercise extreme caution while accepting offers, regardless of how enticing or convincing they may seem.
Some other tips for social engineering attack prevention are:
- Implementation of strong passwords and multi-factor authentication.
- Regularly updating everything – hardware, software, anti-malware, anti-virus, third-party components, etc.
- Using a comprehensive and intelligent security solution like AppTrana that help identify security weaknesses and secure them before attackers get wind of them, monitor traffic to weed out malicious users and ensure multi-layered defense against cyberattacks.
The Bottomline
Over the years, social engineering cyberattacks have grown in sophistication to such an extent that fake websites and emails look realistic enough to fool targets. Organizations must take a proactive approach to prevent social engineering attacks.
