PEOPLE HACKING AWARENESS (SOCIAL ENGINEERING): 8 SOCIAL ENGINEERING PROCESS METHODOLOGY

 

 Most social engineering attacks rely on actual communication between attackers and victims.

The attacker tends to motivate the user into compromising themselves, rather than using brute force methods to breach your data.

The attack cycle gives these criminals a reliable process for deceiving you.

This process can take place in a single email or over months in a series of social media chats. It could even be a face-to-face interaction. But it ultimately concludes with an action you take, like sharing your information or exposing yourself to malware.

It's important to be aware of social engineering as a means of confusion. Many employees and consumers don't realize that just a few pieces of information can give hackers access to multiple networks and accounts.

By masquerading as legitimate users to IT support personnel, they grab your private details — like name, date of birth or address. From there, it's a simple matter to reset passwords and gain almost unlimited access.

Steps for the social engineering attack cycle are usually as follows:

Steps for the social engineering attack cycle are usually as follows:
Gathering Information	The first step for social engineers is researching and gathering extensive information about their targets. This can include details about the company structure, employees, vendors, processes, tools, and organizational culture. Social media, websites, public records, and casual conversations provide key intelligence.
Identifying Vulnerabilities	Next, social engineers analyse the information to identify human vulnerabilities to exploit, like tendencies, emotions, incentives and weak compliance procedures. They uncover pressure points that give them influence over targets.
Developing a Relationship	Many social engineers now try to build rapport with targets by posing as familiar contacts or trustworthy authorities. Phishing emails may have an informal tone and requests often involve helping behaviour. The goal is to develop targets' trust.
Exploiting Trust	With a relationship established, social engineers leverage trust to deceive targets through manipulation tactics like pretexting, phishing or baiting. They exploit fear, obedience to authority, sense of duty, or greed to achieve their objectives.
Executing the Attack	With enough rapport built and information gathered, social engineers execute their attack by fully exploiting vulnerabilities. This may be through a fraudulent phone call, email, or even a visit to the workplace if they can get access.
Completing the Objective	Finally, the social engineer uses the ill-gotten data, money, or access attained from the manipulated target to complete their main objective, which is often stealing data, infiltrating systems, or financial fraud.
This methodology depends heavily on human factors - something technology alone cannot always defend against. Awareness and vigilance are needed to guard against those who exploit trust.