Social Engineering Attacks

This lesson explores social engineering in detail, as required by OCR J277 Section 1.4. Social engineering is one of the most common and effective attack methods because it exploits human psychology rather than technical vulnerabilities.

---

What Is Social Engineering?

Social engineering is the manipulation of people into performing actions or revealing confidential information. Rather than hacking into a system directly, the attacker tricks a person into giving them access.

Social engineering is effective because:

• Humans are often the weakest link in security.
• People tend to trust authority figures and familiar brands.
• Attackers create a sense of urgency to prevent victims from thinking critically.

---

Phishing

Phishing is the most common form of social engineering. Attackers send emails or messages that appear to come from legitimate organisations to trick victims into:

• Clicking malicious links
• Downloading infected attachments
• Entering login credentials on fake websites
• Transferring money

Recognising phishing emails:

Warning Sign	Example
Generic greeting	"Dear Customer" instead of your name
Urgency or threats	"Your account will be closed in 24 hours"
Suspicious sender address	support@bank-security-verify.com
Spelling/grammar errors	"Plese verify you're acount"
Unexpected attachments	Invoice.pdf.exe
Mismatched URLs	Link text says "www.bank.com" but leads elsewhere

OCR Exam Tip: In the exam, you may be given an example email and asked to identify features that suggest it is a phishing attempt. Look for generic greetings, urgency, suspicious links, and poor grammar.

---

Pharming

Pharming redirects users from a legitimate website to a fraudulent one without their knowledge. Unlike phishing (where the victim clicks a link), pharming can affect users who type the correct web address into their browser.

How pharming works:

1. DNS poisoning — The attacker corrupts the DNS (Domain Name System) server so that a legitimate domain name resolves to the IP address of a malicious website.
2. Malware-based — Malware on the victim's computer modifies the local hosts file, redirecting specific domains to fake sites.

Feature	Phishing	Pharming
User action required	Click a link	None — redirect is automatic
Method	Fake email/message	DNS poisoning or malware
Harder to detect	Can spot suspicious links	User sees correct URL in browser

---

Shouldering (Shoulder Surfing)