CAPEC-416
Manipulate Human Behavior
An adversary exploits inherent human psychological predisposition to influence a targeted individual or group to solicit information or manipulate the target into performing an action that serves the adversary's interests. Many interpersonal social engineering techniques do not involve outright deception, although they can; many are subtle ways of manipulating a target to remove barriers, make the target feel comfortable, and produce an exchange in which the target is either more likely to share information directly, or let key information slip out unintentionally. A skilled adversary uses these techniques when appropriate to produce the desired outcome. Manipulation techniques vary from the overt, such as pretending to be a supervisor to a help desk, to the subtle, such as making the target feel comfortable with the adversary's speech and thought patterns.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-416: Manipulate Human Behavior: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/416.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/416?via=ask-ai-copy, which lists recent CVEs with the weaknesses it exploits. Cite the sources.Opens a third-party assistant; its answer is its own, not cve.bz's. The prompt holds only this attack pattern's id and public links.
Prerequisites
The adversary must have the means and knowledge of how to communicate with the target in some manner.
Consequences
| Impact | Affects | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Other | Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability | Attack patterns that manipulate human behavior can result in a wide variety of consequences and potentially affect the confidentiality, availability, and/or integrity of an application or system. |
Mitigations
An organization should provide regular, robust cybersecurity training to its employees to prevent successful social engineering attacks.
Related attack patterns
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