Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

Social engineering attacks have a very long history, though the Internet has made it easier to launch these attacks en masse, according to Sean McNee at DomainTools. McNee points to an advance-fee scam from 1924, in which a crook sent a letter pretending to be trapped in a Spanish debtors prison. The sender requested that the recipient send a check for $36,000 to pay off his debt. After the sender is freed, he promises to pay the recipient back, with an extra $12,000 for the trouble.

A threat actor dubbed “Void Rabisu” used social engineering to target attendees of the Women Political Leaders (WPL) Summit that was held in Brussels from June 7 to 8, 2023, Trend Micro has found. “Since many current and future political leaders had attended this conference, it presented an interesting target for espionage campaigns and served as a possible avenue for threat actors to gain an initial foothold in political organizations,” Trend Micro says.

Even though there are new attack types for cybercriminals, they are still leveraging old-school attack vectors. Why? Because they still work. I cover new attack methods all the time, with recent examples including a sophisticated phishing campaign impersonating Microsoft and an attack last month targeting the Ukrainian military.

Understanding Social Engineering Social engineering is a psychological manipulation technique used by cybercriminals to deceive individuals into divulging confidential information, performing specific actions, or making financial transactions. These attacks prey on human psychology rather than exploiting technical vulnerabilities. Social engineering attacks can take various forms, and email is a common vector for such schemes.

Threat actors continue to use generative AI tools to craft convincing social engineering attacks, according to Glory Kaburu at Cryptopolitan. “In the past, poorly worded or grammatically incorrect emails were often telltale signs of phishing attempts,” Kaburu writes. “Cybersecurity awareness training emphasized identifying such anomalies to thwart potential threats. However, the emergence of ChatGPT has changed the game.

Two giants in the gaming and hospitality industry, Caesars Entertainment and MGM Resorts, recently announced that they were targeted by cybercriminals. But here’s the catch, both ransomware attacks appear to have started with the use of social engineering tactics against IT helpdesk personnel to gain access to systems.

A malwareless and linkless phishing attack uses sextortion and the threat of legal action to get the attention of potential victims and get them to respond. Usually, the intent of a phishing attack is evident. For example, if the attack is pretending to be Microsoft and sends you to a spoofed login page, the whole point of the attack is to harvest the victim’s Microsoft 365 credentials.

Identity and authentication management provider Okta has warned of social engineering attacks that are targeting IT workers in an attempt to gain administrative privileges within organizations’ networks.

No, phishing and social engineering are not the same. Phishing is a subset of social engineering, meaning phishing attacks are a form of social engineering, but not all social engineering is considered phishing. Read on to learn more about what differentiates phishing from social engineering and how to protect yourself from both.