Social Engineering in the Age of Oversharing

In the world of the present day, with the advent and subsequent overflow of communications over the internet, there has been an enormous rise in the usage of social media platforms. This increase in usage of social media has led to the introduction of various cyber threats that can have damaging effects on the victim. This paper will primarily focus on one of these threats, called social engineering. This threat focuses more on exploiting human naivety rather than technology. This paper will highlight the definition of social engineering and the various types of social engineering techniques that have been observed to date, and the various countermeasures developed against these threats as well. It will also focus on certain platforms- LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter, examining how their unique architecture has user-specific norms that have proliferated the number of distinct attacks that have occurred recently. Through the analysis of various studies, a causal proportional relationship will be established between oversharing and social engineering attacks.