Social engineering attack types and prevention techniques- A survey

Abstract

The term "Cyber Security" is getting more and more popular and important over the last few years. Since computers and most of the devices are connected to the internet, they are likely to be hacked by the hackers. In the past, this issue was not a big problem, because not every device is required to be connected to the internet or the internet was not popular as today. But the case has changed over the years. All the changes in the technology area also changed the cyber-attack models as well. With the development of technology and the change of usage of the internet over the last years cyber-attacks have become more common and popular by the hackers. Hackers have discovered that they have an opportunity to steal or earn money in a short time without having to spend too much effort. These days, the type of cyber-attacks is not the same as the ones in the past. As time passes, the cyber-attack methods are also changing and evolving. Today, hackers are using more advanced and effective cyber-attack methods compared to past years. There are many methods that are impossible to cover all of them in this article. Our main focus will be on social engineering attacks in this article. Social engineering attacks use different approaches to cyber attacking. Unlike trying to explode a victim’s social media password etc. using advanced exporting programs, algorithms or techniques, social engineering attacks focus on fooling victims into providing their data to hackers by themselves without using or implementing any password cracking, exploiting techniques etc. We will go over what social media engineering is, type of social engineering methods, what countermeasures can be used to protect from social engineering and more in this article.