Latest coverage for Social Engineering

Frame's AI Models Build Contextualized Security Lessons Automatically in MinutesFrame Security, founded by former Wiz product and sales leader Tal Shlomo, emerged from stealth with $50 million to build AI-generated cyber training and simulations designed to prepare employees for phishing, deepfakes, voice cloning and other personalized social engineering attacks.

Governments Have Long Warned About Kremlin Social Engineering HacksSignal is defending the security of its systems following a series of phishing attacks that took place on the encrypted messaging platform, and that reportedly compromised members of the German government including the president of the country's parliament.

Video of Industry Figures Harvested During Meetings and Used to Lure Future VictimsNorth Korean hackers are pretending to be cryptocurrency insiders, in an attempt to trick targets into accepting Calendly calendar invites. The social engineering ruse is designed to infect Windows and macOS systems with crypto stealers, and to harvest video of real-life people for future lures.

China, Iran, North Korea Hackers Exploit Gemini Across Attack Life CycleState-backed hackers weaponized Google's artificial intelligence model Gemini to accelerate cyberattacks, using the productivity tool as an offensive asset for reconnaissance, social engineering and malware development. Google said it has disabled accounts and strengthened defenses.

ShinyHunters Campaign Uses Voice Phishing to Bypass MFA and Steal Corporate DataSecurity experts warn that "an active and ongoing campaign" being waged by ShinyHunters extortionists has at least 150 organizations in its sights across a range of sectors, with attackers using live voice phishing to bypass multifactor authentication, steal cloud data and hold it to ransom.

Decentralization and Sprawl Complicate University IT ProgramsSeveral Ivy League universities - including Harvard and Princeton - experienced hacks in 2025 through unpatched enterprise software and sophisticated social engineering campaigns, showing that even the nation's wealthiest universities are vulnerable.

Digital Extortionists Try Recruiting Insiders, Email BarragesCollective efforts to bolster cybersecurity defenses have been taking a big bite out of ransomware groups' earnings, leading groups to reach for new strategies, including social engineering, supply chain attacks, extortion services and bribing insiders, warn incident response experts.

Government Agencies Targeted With Infostealers and Cryptomining MalwareA fake police alert is the social engineering cornerstone of an ongoing phishing campaign targeting Ukrainian government agencies, warn security researchers. They're tracking a surge in malicious SVG file attachments, in this case leading to information-stealing and cryptocurrency-mining malware.

Users Download Malware in Bid to Placate MetaA newly surfaced FileFix social engineering campaign puts a new spin on ClickFix attacks by goading users into loading malware under the guise of reporting a wrongful account suspension to social media giant Facebook. Victims likely get sucked into the scam by following a link from a phishing email.

Kinly CISO Don Gibson on Overlooked Social Engineering Threats and Human ErrorSupply chain attacks have evolved into a major entry point for adversaries, but their success still hinges on human error. Kinly CISO Don Gibson says organizations must strengthen processes to reduce risks from overlooked social engineering and human factors in supplier relationships.

Barclays' Becky Pinkard on Regulation, Containment, Leadership and AIRegulatory pressure has made cyber resilience an operational necessity. Becky Pinkard, managing director, global cyber operations at Barclays, discusses how social engineering, containment strategies, leadership practices and automation shape stronger defenses.

Attacker Socially Engineered Developer With Phishing EmailA hacker laced 18 popular npm packages with cryptocurrency stealing malware after socially engineering the developer into giving up his credentials to the JavaScript runtime environment. Aikido Security said the 18 software packages collectively have downloads of more than two billion each week.

Acquisition Targets Business Email Compromise, Impersonation and Spear-PhishingVaronis has acquired SlashNext to strengthen detection of phishing and social engineering attacks. The integration will help prevent identity compromises via email, SMS and collaboration tools while enhancing Miami-based Varonis’ AI-driven data protection.

Malicious Prompts Hidden in Data can Trigger Executable PayloadsHackers can transform artificial intelligence-powered summarization tools into unwitting delivery agents for ransomware instructions through hidden code and prompt manipulation, security researchers warn. The method is an evolution of ClickFix, a social engineering tactic.

Extortionists Detail Fresh Victims, Although Sensitivity of Stolen Data UnclearExtortionists tied to the Scattered Spider and ShinyHunters hacking collectives have begun naming victims and leaking data via a new, dedicated Telegram channel. Many of the breaches appear to trace to social engineering attacks that gained attackers access to a victim's Salesforce instance.

Voice Phishing Attacks on Salesforce Users Remains Repeat ShinyHunters TacticTechnology giants Google and Cisco separately said they've both suffered recent data breaches after attackers socially engineered their employees via voice phishing attacks, leading to a breach of their customer relationship management software, exposing customer data.

Attackers Stole US Customer Data Using Social EngineeringA malicious actor breached a customer relationship management platform used by Allianz Life Insurance of North America on July 16 and stole personally identifiable information of most of its 1.4 million U.S. customers, financial professionals and some employees, the company said.

Experts Warn White House AI Action Plan Could Prioritize Deregulation Over SecurityThe Trump administration pledged Wednesday an offensive against "red tape" hindering artificial intelligence developers in federal and state governments while vowing to ensure that such systems are objective "rather than pursue social engineering agendas."

Ironscales Founder, CEO Eyal Benishti Pushes to Expand AI Protection Beyond EmailDeepfake phishing is escalating as cybercriminals deploy agentic AI to automate everything from data collection to social engineering. Ironscales founder and CEO Eyal Benishti outlines how phishing is targeting communication platforms beyond email, and how defenders can keep up.