What is Social Engineering in Cyber Security? Explained

Social engineering takes advantage of human behaviors and natural tendencies by creating fake offers or scenarios to manipulate people into making security mistakes and giving away confidential information. Attackers exploit human psychology with offers that are 'too good to be true'.

Social engineering attacks are not straightforward and require extensive research. The four steps include: identifying victims and researching their psychological vulnerabilities, engaging with the target through a fake story to gain control, executing the attack using gained knowledge, and finally, removing all traces and interactions after successful infiltration.

The video highlights several types of social engineering attacks. Phishing involves tricking victims into providing confidential information through emails, texts, or pop-ups by creating a sense of urgency, curiosity, or fear. Spear phishing is a more targeted version of phishing aimed at specific individuals with critical information. Baiting uses fake offers to exploit a user's greed or curiosity, often leading to malware downloads or malicious sites. Scareware creates a sense of fear by falsely claiming a system is in danger, tricking users into downloading harmful programs. Pretexting involves an intruder impersonating an authority figure to manipulate users into revealing sensitive information, often after establishing trust with validated standard information.

Victims can avoid social engineering attacks by being attentive to fake offers. Key prevention methods include: avoiding opening emails and attachments from unknown sources, never sharing personal information with strangers or unverified officials, being wary of tempting offers that seem 'too good to be true', using multi-factor authentication to protect accounts even if credentials are stolen, and installing and regularly updating robust anti-malware solutions.