Lesson 1.18: The psychology of social engineering
Social engineering attacks people, not machines: it makes someone click, pay, tell or install by using normal human reactions. The levers attackers pull again and again (authority, urgency, scarcity, fear, curiosity, reward, helpfulness, social proof), and why recognising the lever is more reliable than recognising the sender. In the lab you sort five messages employees reported this week by the pressure each one uses, and find the one that is genuine.
15 min
You will learn to
- Define social engineering
- Name the main psychological levers
- Spot pressure cues in a message
- Explain why verification through another channel works
- Separate genuine messages from manipulation
Key terms
- Social engineering
- Manipulating people into actions or disclosures that help an attacker.
- Phishing
- Fraudulent messages that try to make the recipient click, open, pay or reveal something.
- Business e-mail compromise (BEC)
- Fraud that impersonates executives, suppliers or partners to redirect payments or obtain data.
- Pretext
- The invented story that makes a request seem normal.
- Out-of-band verification
- Checking a request through a different, known channel than the one it arrived on.
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