Sam, a professional hacker. targeted an organization with intention of compromising AWS IAM credentials. He attempted to lure one of the employees of the organization by initiating fake calls while po

Social engineering encompasses manipulation techniques that target human judgment - Sam used vishing (fake phone calls impersonating a legitimate employee) and phishing emails as two distinct social engineering vectors to deceive the victim into surrendering AWS IAM credentials. Both techniques bypass technical security controls entirely by exploiting trust and urgency in the target. Credential harvesting via social engineering is one of the most common initial access vectors against cloud environments.

Insider threat describes malicious or negligent actions taken by a current or former employee who already holds legitimate access - Sam is an external attacker using deception, not a trusted insider.

Password reuse attacks involve taking credentials exposed in a previous data breach and testing them against other services, requiring no human interaction or social manipulation.

Reverse engineering involves analyzing software, firmware, or hardware to understand its internal design or identify vulnerabilities - it does not involve impersonation calls or phishing emails.