Social Engineering Attacks: A Survey

Abstract

The advancements in digital communication technology have made communication between humans more accessible and instant. However, personal and sensitive information may be available online through social networks and online services that lack the security measures to protect this information. Communication systems are vulnerable and can easily be penetrated by malicious users through social engineering attacks. These attacks aim at tricking individuals or enterprises into accomplishing actions that benefit attackers or providing them with sensitive data such as social security number, health records, and passwords. Social engineering is one of the biggest challenges facing network security because it exploits the natural human tendency to trust. This paper provides an in-depth survey about the social engineering attacks, their classifications, detection strategies, and prevention procedures.

Evaluating Contemporary Digital Awareness Programs for Future Application within the Cyber Security Social Engineering Domain

“…Until the early-2000s, traditional methods were popularly employed by organizations as a means of keeping their employees abreast of various social engineering attacks. These traditional methods typically included onsite training and awareness camps, screensavers, posters, manual reminders or in some cases, online e-learning courses [9]. However, the major problem with these traditional awareness methods was that they were not interactive and dynamic.…”

A Novel Jamming Attacks Detection Approach Based on Machine Learning for Wireless Communication

“…3 are the output of each random trees. These trees are combined to form the aggregated estimation to train the forest using: 9 d ( , 9 ) = g [ 9 ( , , 9 )] (7) where is the expectation with respect to the random parameter, conditionally, on and the data set 9 . Once the forest is trained, each tree can predict independently to output values using the following equation:…”

“…It will be enabled by cognitive radio, making these networks open to new attacks, including primary user emulation attacks [5] and spectrum sensing data falsification [6]. Thus, it is important to explore the cybersecurity implications of 5G systems [7,8]. Jammers create an unwanted denial of service by transmitting radio signals that flood the communication channels aiming at decreasing SNR of legitimate users thereby interrupting their communication.…”

A Taxonomy for Social Engineering Attacks via Personal Devices

“…The scope of social engineers starts from message manipulation to disrupt organizational working structure and extends to the exploitation of firms' infrastructure [15]. The scope of physical social engineering attacks encompasses retaining first-hand information from a specific user, whereas, the scope of social-based attacks extends to exploitation of emotional and psychological vulnerabilities of a user [16][17][18][19].…”