Abstract: Social Engineering refers to the nontechnical methods of breaking security of a computerized system. Social Engineering attacks target the vulnarabilities of the people rather than of the softwares. Social engineers try to break the human trust rather than discovering ways to hack the system. Social engineers take benefits of human trust, curiosity, emotions, fear, urgency, need, lack of common sense and most importantly technical unawareness. Computer networks can be made secured from the technical attacks by using most efficent and effective
firewalls, antivirus softwares, intrusion detection systems etc. But it is high time to secure the networks from the social attacks too. This paper explains human factor based social attacks and some factors to analyze for the prevention and detection purpose.
Keywords: Social Engineering, Computer Networks, Phishing, Baiting, Quid Pro Quo, Pretexting, Tailgating
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