Social engineering comes from two words, social and engineering, where social refers to our day-to-day lives\u2014which includes both personal and professional lives\u2014while engineering means a defined way of performing a task by following certain steps to achieving the target.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Phases in a social engineering attack<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n A social engineering attack is a continuous process that starts with initial research, which is the starting phase, until its completion, when the social engineer ends the conversation. The conversation is a brief coverage of the four phases that the social engineer follows to perform an attack.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Research<\/strong>:- <\/p>\n\n\n\n In the research phase, the attacker tries to gather information about the target company. The information about the target can be collected from various resources and means, such as dumpster diving, the company’s website, public documents, physical interactions, and so on. Research is necessary when targeting a single user.<\/p>\n\n\n\n