Security | Threat Detection | Cyberattacks | DevSecOps | Compliance

There is no other way to say it clearer, social engineering is going to be a lot, lot worse soon and far more successful than it is today. And that’s saying a lot. It’s already pretty bad. As I’ve been touting for over 20 years…in hundreds of articles…social engineering is involved in more successful data breaches than any other single hacker method.

Attackers are using Microsoft Teams calls to trick users into installing the Matanbuchus malware loader, which frequently precedes ransomware deployment, according to researchers at Morphisec. Matanbuchus is a malware-as-a-service offering that allows threat actors to install additional payloads onto infected Windows systems. “Over the past nine months, Matanbuchus has been used in highly targeted campaigns that have potentially led to ransomware compromises,” Morphisec says.

How many times have you heard the phrase “don’t trust strangers”? The key point today is that many strangers disguise themselves as someone familiar, and that misplaced trust is what leads us to be deceived. Cybercriminals widely use this tactic, and it has a very specific name. Have you ever asked yourself, 'What is social engineering in cybersecurity?' A social engineering attack leverages human psychology through manipulation.

Social engineering isn’t just a trick of trade anymore, it is trade. Threat actors aren’t only targeting systems; they’re targeting people. And because humans are often the weakest link in cybersecurity, attackers use psychological manipulation to deceive users into giving up credentials, clicking malicious links, or downloading malware. The challenge? These attacks don’t always leave behind obvious traces. This is where Extended Detection and Response (XDR) becomes essential.

According to Zoho Workplace, organizations struggle to protect themselves as spam makes up 45% of all emails. These sophisticated threats deliberately exploit human psychology. Attackers convince people to bypass security measures, which leads to unauthorized access to the system. Standard defense mechanisms alone cannot curb these evolving threats. This blog explores how organizations can prevent social engineering using contextual threat intelligence and real-time behavioral analysis.

While it’s easy to look at the modern threat landscape as a cat-and-mouse game between sophisticated threat actors utilizing high-tech methods to hack their way into valuable systems, the reality can be far less dramatic, albeit equally as precarious.

Researchers at Bitdefender warn of a wave of social engineering attacks targeting WhatsApp accounts. The attacks begin with automated phone calls that instruct users to add a specific phone number to their WhatsApp contacts. The call then ends abruptly. The scammers are doing this to gather potential targets for future attacks. Most people will ignore the calls, but those who do add the number to their contacts will be more likely to fall for additional social engineering attacks.

Social engineering remains a primary initial access vector for cybercriminals, according to a new report from Europol. “Social engineering, which exploits human error to gain access to systems or personal information, stands out as a prominent technique used by criminal actors in this context,” Europol says.

ClickFix has quickly become a rampant social-engineering tactic. First observed back in October 2023, it aims to trick users into pasting commands into the run dialog box under the guise of verifying the user’s connection and authenticity to the domain. Given its ease of use and ability to bypass technical security measures, adoption of ClickFix has been growing at an alarming rate.