Social engineering: blagging, phishing and shouldering

Overview

Why social engineering works, blagging, phishing, smishing and shouldering with examples, the warning signs of a phishing email, and how people and organisations defend against it.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What is social engineering?

   Model answer

   Social engineering is manipulating people so that they give up confidential information. Social engineering targets human weakness rather than technical flaws.

2. 2

   Why is social engineering often successful?

   Model answer

   People tend to trust others and want to be helpful. Attackers exploit this trust, urgency or fear to make victims act without thinking.

3. 3

   What is blagging?

   Model answer

   Blagging, or pretexting, is inventing a scenario to persuade a victim to give information or take an action. The victim would not normally do this.

4. 4

   Give an example of blagging.

   Model answer

   An attacker phones an employee pretending to be from the IT department. The attacker asks for the employee's password to fix a made-up problem.

5. 5

   What is phishing?

   Model answer

   Phishing is fraudulently obtaining private information, usually by email or text message. The message pretends to come from a trusted organisation such as a bank.

6. 6

   What signs might show that an email is a phishing attempt?

   Model answer

   Warning signs can include a generic greeting, spelling mistakes and an urgent demand for action. A link to a web address that does not match the real company is another sign.

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