Social Engineering Attacks During the COVID-19 Pandemic

• Published in: SN computer science Vol. 2; no. 2; p. 78
• Main Authors: Venkatesha, Sushruth, Reddy, K. Rahul, Chandavarkar, B. R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Singapore Springer Singapore 01.04.2021; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Communication; Computer Imaging; Computer Science; Computer Systems Organization and Communication Networks; Cooperation; COVID-19; Cyber Security and Privacy in Communication Networks; Cybercrime; Cybersecurity; Data Structures and Information Theory; Education; Information Systems and Communication Service; Internet; Malware; Pandemics; Pattern Recognition and Graphics; Review; Review Article; Social interaction; Social networks; Software; Software Engineering/Programming and Operating Systems; Video teleconferencing; Vision; COVID-19 pandemic; Social Engineering Attacks; Phishing attacks; Social Engineering Attack mitigation
• ISSN: 2662-995X; 2661-8907; 2661-8907
• DOI: 10.1007/s42979-020-00443-1

The prevailing conditions surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted a variety of everyday activities onto platforms on the Internet. This has led to an increase in the number of people present on these platforms and also led to jump in the time spent by existing participants online. This increase in the presence of people on the Internet is almost never preceded by education about cyber-security and the various types of attacks that an everyday User of the Internet may be subjected to. This makes the prevailing situation a ripe one for cyber-criminals to exploit and the most common type of attacks made are Social Engineering Attacks. Social Engineering Attacks are a group of sophisticated cyber-security attacks that exploit the innate human nature to breach secure systems and thus have some of the highest rate of success. This paper delves into the particulars of how the COVID-19 pandemic has set the stage for an increase in Social Engineering Attacks, the consequences of this and some techniques to thwart such attacks.