CAPEC-418
Influence Perception of Reciprocation
An adversary uses a social engineering techniques to produce a sense of obligation in the target to perform a certain action or concede some sensitive or key piece of information. Obligation has to do with actions one feels they need to take due to some sort of social, legal, or moral requirement, duty, contract, or promise. There are various techniques for fostering a sense of obligation to reciprocate or concede during ordinary modes of communication. One method is to compliment the target, and follow up the compliment with a question. If performed correctly the target may volunteer a key piece of information, sometimes involuntarily.
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Explain the attack pattern CAPEC-418: Influence Perception of Reciprocation: how it unfolds, what it needs and how to prevent and detect it in my systems. Use https://capec.mitre.org/data/definitions/418.html and https://cve.bz/cve/capec/418?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.
Skills required
- Low skill
The adversary requires strong inter-personal and communication skills.
Resources required
None: No specialized resources are required to execute this type of attack.
Consequences
| Impact | Affects | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Other | Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability | Attacks that influence the perception of the target can result in a wide variety of consequences and negatively affect potentially 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 social engineering attacks.
Related attack patterns
- Part of
- CAPEC-417 Influence Perception
Examples
An adversary develops a relationship with the target to foster a feeling of obligation in them to perform a c…
An adversary develops a relationship with the target to foster a feeling of obligation in them to perform a certain action or concede some information. A perception of obligation/concession means that the target feels they need to behave in some way or perform some sort of action due to being morally or legally bound to do so.
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