Phases of a social engineering attack
Social engineering attacks are not complicated and do not necessarily require a high level of technological expertise to launch. In its simplest terms, a social engineering attack can be broken down into the following phases:
- Conducting research: During the research stage, data about a target company is gathered. The vast majority of it will come from browsing the target organization’s website, discovering information online, or perhaps even speaking with personnel; other methods may be used to gather information, even dumpster diving when possible. We’ll discuss some of these methods in detail in the next section.
- Selecting the target: An attacker chooses the victim during the target phase from among other workers at the company. The attacker may look for targets whose roles involve company communications; this way, the attacker can attempt to get more information about the company and personnel. Sometimes the attacker...
