Social engineering manipulates people into revealing access or approving actions, causing compromise; verify requests and enforce least privilege.
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Social engineering is the deliberate manipulation of people into disclosing information, bypassing a control, or performing an action for an attacker. It commonly uses phishing, voice or text messages, impersonation, pretexting, and physical access attempts. In a threat model, the attacker targets trust, urgency, authority, or helpfulness rather than exploiting software directly. Successful deception can expose credentials or personal data, authorize fraudulent payments, enable malware delivery, or provide an initial foothold for account or network compromise.
Effective defenses make sensitive requests independently verifiable and limit the damage of a mistake. Use phishing-resistant multi-factor authentication where practical, least-privilege access, and approval or call-back procedures for payments, password resets, and changes to account or banking details. Staff should have a simple way to report suspected messages without penalty; security teams can then investigate related accounts, messages, and login activity, revoke exposed credentials, and contain follow-on access. Awareness training helps people recognize pretexts, but should reinforce these technical and procedural controls rather than rely on vigilance alone.
The North Korean state-sponsored threat actor known as Kimsuky (aka Velvet Chollima) has been attributed to a fresh set of cyber attacks targeting South Korean military and corporate entities through March and April 2026
Carnival disclosed a data breach affecting nearly 6 million people after hackers used social engineering to access employee accounts. Carnival Corporation is notifying nearly 6 million people after a data breach exposed personal information. According to the notification shared with the Maine Attorney General’s Office, the total number of persons affected is 5,995,277. The company said […]
A new campaign orchestrated by a previously undocumented threat actor has targeted cryptocurrency organizations with an aim to facilitate digital asset theft using recruitment-themed social engineering and bespoke macOS malware
Silent Ransom Group isn’t prolific, but it's demonstrated a knack for attacking the legal services sector with an extraordinary dual use of social engineering and in-person visits to victims’ workstations. The post FBI warns US-based law firms to be on the lookout for cybercrime group that steals data in person appeared first on CyberScoop.
Microsoft has warned of an active cryptojacking campaign that makes use of artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot interactions as a mechanism for surfacing malicious download sites