Impact of Social. Engineering on the modern security Since most of cyberattacks include non-technological exploits, the impact of SE on modern information security has increased significantly. Recent statistics [11][12] provide additional and relevant insight such as the following: 1 year is the medium time to discover an attack performed via SE. 5 is the average number of emails needed to create an entry point in a company. Attacks are typically discovered by third parties. Attacks have become narrower, involving less generic victims at the same time. This is on the one hand a consequence of improved hiding tactics, whose aim is to keep the attack “under the threshold” reducing the risk of being detected, but it is also a sign of a better a-priori selection of the potential targets and thus a more aggressive usage of SE techniques. As mentioned in a previous section the current protection strategies address information systems, whilst, in practice, both humans and information systems can be considered as access points to major assets. For instance, login credentials are considered as critical information, either directly, they are an important asset or indirectly, they need to be stolen because they are the main entry point to that important asset. Credentials are often stored as encrypted information in one or more systems. However, they are also "stored" in personal devices, sheets of paper, etc. as well as memorized by users. The approach of SE is to acquire the credentials by focusing the attack on humans rather than systems. The last ones can be easily hardened and improved, making attackers work harder and dedicate more resources to access them, while human behaviour is more complex, subjective and harder to “patched” [13]. Enterprises have become extremely vulnerable and recent attacks have had major societal impact. Good old days of (in)security are back. In this context, enterprises have become extremely vulnerable, even large companies that have made significant investments in security and often operate worldwide have experienced attacks that exploit the human element of (in)security [14][15][16]. This situation shows that the strategies used in modern attacks influence the way attackers plan and focus their actions against citizens and enterprises. These strategies originate from the logics of Advanced Persistent Threat (APTs), detailed in section 4.1.1) and are directly associated with Targeted Attacks (TAs). They are becoming more popular thanks to the c...
