False pretenses A thief posing as a hardware supplier sent out fake invoices that were transferred to offshore bank accounts to target two tech giants. Nearly 100 million was stolen in multiple attacks over a period of several years. [3] Quid pro quo With the advent of telecommuting tech support fraud also rose sharply turning what used to be more of a consumer fraud into a business risk. [4] Waterhole An international aviation association affiliated with the United Nations has been the involuntary partner of cyber spies.
Government-sponsored hackers entered the network in 2016 and used it as a watering hole for a year to penetrate the networks of member airlines and aviation authorities around the world. [5] Angler phishing In 2016 security researchers in the UK uncovered a spate of angler phishing attacks whatsapp mobile number list targeting a number of UK banks. The scammers created similar-looking Twitter profiles that mimic banks' customer service accounts and used them to collect credit card numbers PIN numbers and other sensitive information from unsuspecting account holders.
How technology can defend against social engineering attacks As in so many cybercrime cases the best defense against social engineering attacks is security training . Teach all users of the system to be skeptical of messages requesting sensitive information payment or software installation even if they appear to be coming from the boss. As the FBI recommended in a recent alert about compromised business email BEC employees should ensure that URLs in emails actually match the organization they claim to represent verify that all in the links contained in emails are spelled correctly scammers often use similar-looking addresses and never give out personal information via email.