You are tasked to perform a penetration test. While you are performing information gathering, you find an employee list in Google. You find the receptionist's email, and you send her an email changing

Social engineering manipulates people through psychological deception rather than exploiting technical vulnerabilities directly. The attacker spoofed the boss's email address to establish false trust, then replaced legitimate PDF links with malware-laden ones, exploiting the receptionist's compliance with perceived authority to gain network access.

Piggybacking is a physical security attack where an unauthorized person gains entry to a restricted area with the consent of an authorized individual, not a digital deception technique.

Tailgating is a physical intrusion method where an attacker follows an authorized person through a secured door without their knowledge, which is unrelated to email-based manipulation.

Eavesdropping involves passively intercepting network or communications traffic, not actively impersonating individuals and delivering malicious content.