Hackers and cybercriminals are a bunch of guys who know what they want. That often means login credentials for all accounts, passwords, or other sensitive information. However, it’s about more than technology with them. They also know how to manipulate a victim’s emotions to induce an artificial sense of urgency so that the victim will act rashly and send money, transfer bitcoins, or comply with some other action they would reject in their right state of mind. That’s what you call ‘social engineering.’
Cybercrimes can be perpetrated by abusing somebody’s trust instead of hacking into a network, a computer, or a system. This type of digital crime relies on psychological manipulation. It’s exceedingly effective and much easier to complete according to the criminal’s wishes because it needs no technical expertise.
As our lives become more closely linked to digital environments, such as the internet, social engineering attacks are becoming more aggressive and elaborate, making them more challenging to identify. This guide gives you all the essential information about social engineering, how it works, some of its most common strategies, and how to protect yourself against it.
Social engineering: How does it work?
Social engineering mainly involves communication between a victim and an attacker. It is mostly used in conjunction with other forms of cyberattacks. The attackers smoothly trick the victims into revealing sensitive information or vulnerabilities that they use to advance their attacks.