Top Social Engineering Tactics

While email phishing is one of the most prolific social engineering tactics, there are other techniques to be aware of.

Business Email Compromise (BEC)

BEC (business email compromise, a.k.a., CEO fraud) is a type of highly targeted social engineering attack where scammers impersonate a top executive (CEO, CFO, etc.) and instruct lower-ranking employees to execute any sort of wire transfer or update banking, payroll or invoice information, gift card purchases, or share sensitive information like employees' personally identifiable information or company financial statements. The FBI received an estimated 20,000 BEC complaints in 2021, which reportedly cost the U.S. economy $2.4 billion.

Smishing

From notifications of phony package deliveries to COVID-19 schemes, to fake money transfers to false one-time passwords or PINs, researchers believe that the increase in smishing is because people seem to respond more to SMS texts over calls or emails. Some people are quick to click text links before reading the message or raising suspicion about it. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission received 378,119 complaints of text message fraud, which included smishing attempts; consumers indicated facing a loss of $86 million due to text messages.

Deepfakes

Deepfake is a type of synthetic or manipulated content (audio, images or video) that is not real, but looks realistic. Social media enthusiasts and hackers are using deepfakes to create more realistic impersonations of trusted sources. In 2020, scammers cloned the voice of a company executive (using AI) and successfully convinced a bank manager to transfer $35 million to a criminal's account. The FBI reported that attackers are using voice deepfakes to attend remote job interviews.

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Are you aware of these social engineering tactics?

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