Social engineering in social networking sites: Affect-based model

Abstract

While social engineering represents a real and ominous threat to many organizations, companies, governments, and individuals, social networking sites (SNSs) have been identified as some of the most common means of social engineering attacks. Due to factors that reduce users' ability to detect social engineering tricks and increase attackers' ability to launch them, SNSs seem to be perfect breeding grounds for exploiting people's vulnerabilities and the weakest link in security. This work will contribute to the social engineering knowledge base by identifying different entities and sub-entities that affect social-engineering-based attacks in SNSs. Moreover, this paper includes an intensive and comprehensive overview of different aspects of social engineering threats in SNSs.