Analyzing Social Engineering Attacks
Maxwell Taylor Vinson
Old Dominion University
CYSE 201S
Dr. Jordan Quinn
April 21, 2026
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Analyzing Social Engineering Attacks
Social engineering attacks are cybersecurity threats that take advantage of human
psychology rather than weaknesses in the technical systems. These attacks have the intention of
manipulating people to reveal their private information like passwords or any credentials they
have. Completely different on how people think about hacking, social engineering relies on
deception and urgency. Which is how this is a very effective and dangerous cybercrime that is
very common in modern society. Some common examples are phishing, spear phishing,
pretexting, and baiting (Lenaerts-Bergmans, 2023).
From a psychological perspective, these attacks will exploit things like authority bias and
urgency bias, which is when individuals will be more likely to interact with these scams due to
how legitimate they appear and how time sensitive it all is. From the social perspective, these
online communication methods are making these attacks much easier. Since people rely very
heavily on texting, emailing, and much more, it is easier for the attackers to impersonate
someone else. What makes a big impact is the different levels of cybersecurity awareness that
these individuals have and it affects their likelihood to fall for these deceptions. According to
ESecurity Solutions (2024), many attacks succeed since the users do not verify who is trying to
contact them.
There are solutions to this in both technical and human-based ways. For the technical side
we have multi-factor authentication, and spam filters for our emails. However human-based
would be training employees or the general public, they should know how to recognize phishing
emails and fake requests. Regular training and tests should be held for people to understand and
put into use some cybersecurity knowledge.
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This topic shows that cybersecurity is not purely technical, it’s also about the users.
Strong security systems fail if the user makes a simple mistake. Combining cybersecurity with
social science helps explain why people are falling for these attacks and how we can try to
prevent them. Understanding what’s the reason for our behavior makes us improvise and try to
figure out effective solutions.
Social engineering attacks show that people can be the problem not the system itself. By
using both technical tools and educating the users we can reduce these threats.
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References
Lenaerts-Bergmans, B. (2023, November 8). 10 types of social engineering attacks.
Crowdstrike.com.
https:\/\/www.crowdstrike.com\/en-us\/cybersecurity-101\/social-engineering\/types-of
-social-engineering-attacks\/
Social Engineering Attacks & Solutions & Phishing Attacks. (2024, May 28). ESecurity
Solutions – Cyber Security Solutions for Business.
https:\/\/www.esecuritysolutions.com\/cybersecurity-solutions\/social-engineering-att
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