Social Engineering in Cyber Attacks: The Human Weakness in Cybersecurity

By: Karrie Westmoreland

Cybersecurity often focuses on firewalls, encryption, and advanced threat detection, but an estimated 74-90% of cyber attacks exploit human behavior rather than technical vulnerabilities. Social engineering attacks manipulate trust, urgency, and deception, making victims unknowingly grant access, reveal credentials, or transfer funds. 

Even the biggest corporations and the most skilled cybersecurity experts have fallen victim to these manipulative tactics. Below, we explore how social engineering attacks work, major cases where they have succeeded, and how to prevent them. 

Attackers now use AI-generated voices to impersonate executives, employees, or family members. 

Notable Case (2024): A financial institution in Europe reported a case where cybercriminals used AI voice cloning to trick an employee into approving a fraudulent wire transfer worth millions. The employee believed they were speaking to their CEO. 

AI-generated deepfake videos are being used to bypass video verification for remote identity authentication. 

2024 Example: A multinational company’s HR department was targeted by a deepfake video of the CFO requesting urgent financial transactions. Security teams identified subtle inconsistencies in the video, preventing fraud. 

Attackers hijack or mimic high-profile accounts to spread phishing links or scam users with fake investment opportunities. 

Ongoing Trend (2024-2025): Hackers have been compromising LinkedIn profiles of senior executives, using them to target lower-level employees with malware-laced documents. 

Attackers pose as vendors, suppliers, or IT support via WhatsApp, Telegram, and SMS, convincing employees to install malicious apps or reset credentials. 

Recent Incident (2024): A major logistics company faced a security breach after a fake IT support agent messaged employees, asking them to "reset their VPN credentials." This led to network infiltration and data theft. 

Emerging Trend (2024-2025): Attackers are embedding malicious QR codes in emails and posters, tricking users into entering credentials on fake sites. 

Recent Corporate Case (2024): A global retail chain had fraudulent QR codes placed in-store that redirected customers to phishing websites, stealing their credit card information. 

Unlike traditional hacking, social engineering bypasses security defenses by targeting people rather than technology. Attackers use psychological manipulation to deceive victims into disclosing confidential information or performing harmful actions. 

These techniques are simple yet highly effective, leading to massive financial and data losses. 

Even billion-dollar companies with strong cybersecurity measures have fallen victim to social engineering. Here are two of the most high-profile cases:

• When? 2013–2015 

• How? A Business Email Compromise (BEC) scam 
• Impact? Over $100 million stolen from two tech giants
   

A Lithuanian hacker, Evaldas Rimasauskas, tricked Google and Facebook into wiring payments to fraudulent accounts. 

• He impersonated a real vendor (Quanta Computer), which both companies regularly did business with. 

• Using fake invoices, contracts, and corporate emails, he convinced company employees to send massive payments. 

• The fraud continued for two years before being detected. 
  

• Google and Facebook lost millions before realizing the fraud. 

• The FBI arrested Rimasauskas in 2017, but a large portion of the stolen funds was never recovered. 

• This case demonstrated that even tech giants with strict security can be tricked by well-crafted deception. 

• When? July 2020 

• How? Social engineering of Twitter employees 
• Impact? High-profile accounts hijacked, leading to a global cryptocurrency scam 
  
  

A 17-year-old hacker, Graham Ivan Clark, breached Twitter’s internal systems using social engineering. 

• He manipulated Twitter employees into revealing credentials for internal admin tools. 

• Once inside, he took over high-profile Twitter accounts, including:  

• Elon Musk 

• Bill Gates 

• Barack Obama 

• Jeff Bezos 

• Apple and Uber 

• He posted fake cryptocurrency donation messages, claiming to double Bitcoin payments sent to a specified address. 

• Within a few hours, over $100,000 was stolen from unsuspecting Twitter users.
   

• The attack exposed serious security flaws in Twitter’s internal access controls. 

• Twitter implemented stricter employee authentication measures to prevent future incidents. 

• Clark was arrested and sentenced to three years in prison. 

This attack proved that a single social engineering exploit on an employee could compromise an entire global platform. 

Even renowned security professionals, who train others to avoid these attacks, have been deceived. Here are two notable cases:

Who was targeted? Kevin Mitnick 
Why was it impactful? One of the most famous hackers in history, who himself specialized in social engineering, was caught using the same tactics. 

Kevin Mitnick, once the most wanted hacker in the world, was arrested in 1995 due to a social engineering attack against him. 

• FBI agent Tsutomu Shimomura investigated Mitnick for hacking into government and corporate systems. 

• Shimomura socially engineered a phone company employee to obtain call logs that traced Mitnick’s location. 

• The FBI raided his apartment and arrested him.  

• Mitnick’s arrest led to stricter cybersecurity laws in the U.S. 

• After prison, he became a leading cybersecurity consultant, writing books like The Art of Deception to educate others on social engineering. 

• His case is one of the most famous examples of a hacker being outsmarted by the same tactics he used. 

Who was targeted? Christopher Hadnagy 
Why was it impactful? One of the world’s leading social engineering experts had his own company infiltrated using social engineering tactics. 

Christopher Hadnagy, author of Social Engineering: The Science of Human Hacking, teaches companies how to protect themselves from deception. However, his company fell victim to an attack using techniques he warns about. 

• Attackers gathered intelligence from LinkedIn and public records. 

• They impersonated a former employee and convinced Hadnagy’s support team to reset passwords. 
• The attackers gained access to internal systems before being detected. 
• The breach demonstrated that even experts are not immune to social engineering. 

• Hadnagy used the incident as a case study to improve security training. 

Social engineering is evolving, becoming more sophisticated and harder to detect. Here are the biggest emerging threats: 

Attackers are now using AI-generated voice and video deepfakes to conduct highly convincing impersonation scams. 

Key Risk: Companies using remote verification or video-based authentication are now vulnerable to synthetic identity fraud. 

Cybercriminals are leveraging AI tools like ChatGPT to create flawless, grammar-perfect phishing emails that are harder to detect. AI-generated fake job scams have also risen, where attackers create convincing job offers that lead victims to malware-laced onboarding portals. 

AI-powered bots can interact with victims in real-time, making phishing messages more dynamic and responsive. Some scams now feature AI-powered chatbots that answer security questions convincingly, making them much harder to detect. 

AI now generates perfect executive impersonation emails that adapt based on the victim’s responses. 2025 Forecast: BEC scams will become faster, more scalable, and harder to detect due to AI-driven personalization. 

• Companies like Darktrace, Cylance, and Microsoft Defender use AI to detect email anomalies, deepfakes, and voice spoofing. 

• AI-powered behavioral analysis can identify phishing attempts before employees fall for them. 
  

• Proofpoint, Barracuda, Mimecast: Detect and filter phishing emails using real-time threat intelligence. 

• Google Workspace & Microsoft 365: Built-in phishing protections alert users about suspicious emails. 

• CrowdStrike, Symantec, McAfee: Provide endpoint security to block malicious files and phishing sites. 

• Menlo Security & FireEye: Use browser isolation to prevent users from accessing fake phishing sites. 

• Yubikey & Duo Security: Hardware authentication keys for stronger MFA. 

• Notary-Based Verification: Use blockchain verification for sensitive transactions. 

Social engineering is a powerful and highly effective attack method that has exploits human psychology rather than technical flaws, awareness, training, and verification processes are the best defenses against it. Social engineering attacks will continue evolving, especially with AI-powered deception techniques like deepfake videos, voice cloning, and chatbot-assisted phishing. However, a combination of awareness, strict security measures, and verification processes can significantly reduce risks. 

To detect and prevent social engineering attacks, organizations must implement a combination of technical, procedural, and educational countermeasures. Employee awareness training is crucial to recognizing phishing, pretexting, and other manipulation tactics.  

As social engineering tactics become more advanced, organizations and individuals must stay ahead with continuous awareness and strong security practices. While attackers exploit human psychology, the best defense lies in education, verification, and the strategic use of AI-driven security tools. By fostering a cybersecurity-conscious culture, enforcing strict authentication measures, and regularly updating defenses, businesses and individuals can significantly reduce their risk. Though the threat landscape evolves, so do our capabilities to combat it—through vigilance, innovation, and a proactive approach, we can outsmart even the most sophisticated cyber threats.