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.
American Hospital Association Warns of Social Engineering SchemesThe American Hospital Association is warning of increasingly sophisticated social engineering scams targeting hospital IT help desks with schemes involving the stolen credentials of revenue cycle and other finance employees to commit payment fraud against the institutions.
Microsoft said the social engineering campaign aims to steal sensitive data from experts deemed to be able to influence intelligence and policies relating to the Israel-Hamas War
High-profile individuals working on Middle Eastern affairs at universities and research organizations in Belgium, France, Gaza, Israel, the U.K., and the U.S. have been targeted by an Iranian cyber espionage group called Mind Sandstorm since November 2023
Robert Blumofe on DDoS Attacks, API Security, Zero Trust and FIDO2-MFARobert Blumofe, executive vice president and CTO at Akamai, expects social engineering, phishing, extortion and AI-driven attacks to dominate the threat landscape. He advised enterprises to use FIDO2-based MFA, zero trust, microsegmentation and API security to reduce risks.