Which of the following is an example of a social engineering technique?

The correct answer is B. Pretexting. Pretexting is a social engineering technique where an attacker fabricates a scenario (a "pretext") to manipulate a victim into divulging information or taking an action - for example, impersonating an IT technician to get a user's password. Social engineering exploits human psych

Attacks and Countermeasures

Question

Options

ASQL injection
BPretexting
CMalware injection
DCode obfuscation

How the community answered

(38 responses)

A
5% (2)
B
92% (35)
C
3% (1)

Explanation

Pretexting is a social engineering technique where an attacker fabricates a scenario (a "pretext") to manipulate a victim into divulging information or taking an action - for example, impersonating an IT technician to get a user's password. Social engineering exploits human psychology, not technical vulnerabilities.

A (SQL injection) is a technical attack that exploits database query parsing - no human manipulation involved.
C (Malware injection) is also a technical attack that deploys malicious code into a system or process.
D (Code obfuscation) is a defensive or evasion technique that makes code harder to read/analyze - not an attack on people.

Memory tip: Social engineering = "social" - it always targets people, not systems. If the answer involves manipulating a human through deception (phishing, pretexting, baiting, vishing), it's social engineering. If it targets software or hardware directly, it's a technical attack.

Topics

#social engineering#pretexting#attack classification#hacking techniques

Community Discussion

No community discussion yet for this question.

Full 112-52 Practice