What is Social Engineering?

Phishing

A classic example is the tech support scam, and it comes in many varieties and levels of sophistication.

Over the past few years online service providers have been proactively messaging customers when they detect unusual activity on their users' accounts. Not surprisingly, cybercriminals have used this trend to their advantage. Many of the emails are designed poorly with bad grammar, etc. but others look legitimate enough for someone to click if they weren't paying close attention.

Consider this fake Paypal security notice warning potential marks of "unusual log in activity" on their accounts:

Hovering over the links would be a dead giveaway that this is a phishing email, but enough targeted users click without thinking and scams like this continue. 

Spear Phishing

In a spear phishing attack, threat actors use a deep knowledge of the potential victims to target them, and that approach allows them to tailor the attack. These emails are more convincing and harder to detect than regular phishing emails. The attacker knows exactly who and what they're targeting.

Unlike mass phishing emails which may be attempting to distribute ransomware or gather individual login credentials to make a quick buck, spear phishers are normally after confidential information, business secrets, etc.

CEO Fraud

Here's an example of a CEO fraud attempt targeted at a KnowBe4 customer. She received an email from an individual purporting to be the president of the company. The employee initially responded, then remembered her training and reported the email via our Phish Alert Button, alerting her IT department to the fraud attempt.

When the employee failed to proceed with the wire transfer, she got another email from the threat actors, who probably thought they had her fooled:

Because this employee had gone through proper security awareness training, she was able to keep her company out of the headlines. This was a close call though, and not everyone is that lucky!

Social Media

Cybercriminals create bogus profiles on social media and try to trick you. They will impersonate a celebrity or one of your friends or colleagues. These profiles look very much like the real thing, and it’s easy to get tricked. They try to impersonate a celebrity that the cybercriminals already know you like a lot.

Let’s say you were tricked into believing a bogus Social Network profile. The next step is that they try to make you click on a link or install malicious software, often something to watch a video or review photos. If you click, or do that install, it’s highly likely you will infect your desktop with malware that allows the attacker to take over your PC.