Social Engineering for Security Attacks

Social Engineering is a kind of advance persistent threat (APT) that gains private and sensitive information through social networks or other types of communication. The attackers can use social engineering to obtain access into social network accounts and stays there undetected for a long period of time. The purpose of the attack is to steal sensitive data and spread false information rather than to cause direct damage. Such targets can include Facebook accounts of government agencies, corporations, schools or high-profile users. We propose to use IDS, Intrusion Detection System, to battle such attacks. What the social engineering does is try to gain easy access, so that the attacks can be repeated and ongoing. The focus of this study is to find out how this type of attacks are carried out so that they can properly detected by IDS in future research.