Robot Social Engineering: Attacking Human Factors with Non-Human Actors

Social robots may make use of social abilities such as persuasion, commanding obedience, and lying. Meanwhile, the field of computer security and privacy has shown that these interpersonal skills can be applied by humans to perform social engineering attacks. Social engineering attacks are the deliberate application of manipulative social skills by an individual in an attempt to achieve a goal by convincing others to do or say things that may or may not be in their best interests. In our work we argue that robot social engineering attacks are already possible and that defenses should be developed to protect against these attacks. We do this by defining what a robot social engineer is, outlining how previous research has demonstrated robot social engineering, and discussing the risks that can accompany robot social engineering attacks.