Psychological principles in techniques of social engineering

Social engineering is type of attack, usable against an organization or individual. It focuses on weaknesses of human factor. In recent times, characterized by anonymity, fast pace and focus on technologies presents this way of attack a dangerous threat. Human factor tends to be underestimated in defense, into which organizations invest large amounts of money. Even though social engineering has been written about many times, most of work has been focused more on technical part, and explaining techniques of social engineering has been left out. The goal of this paper is explaining these techniques from psychological point of view, and using that as a basis for defense for organizations, threaten by social engineering attack. In first part, this work describes two main themes -- social engineering and social psychology. Afterwards, it describes principles, which are used in social engineering attack, and ways in which social engineering uses them. In second part are these information used to analyze several practical examples of social engineering attack. Then, they are used to formulate practical advices to defend against social engineering attack.