Abstract:

As the digital era matures, cyber security evolves and software vulnerabilities diminish, people however, as individuals, are more exposed today than ever before. Presently, one of the most practised and effective penetration attacks are social rather than technical, so efficient in fact, that these exploits often play a crucial role to support cyber assaults.

Social Engineering is the act of exploiting the human flaws to breach security and access sensitive data. Preying in particular upon the human tendency towards trust, cyber criminals induce their victims to break security protocol and to divulge propitious information for a more targeted attack.

This paper examines recurrent social engineering techniques used by attackers and reveals a few complementary technical methodologies to conduct effective exploits, as well as recommending good practises and measures for organisations to protect themselves.

Keywords:

Social Engineering, Cyber Security, Cyber Attack, Hacking, Network Security, Network Exploit, Information Breach, Malicious, Spear-Phishing.