Non-Technical Cyber-Attacks and International Cybersecurity: The Case of Social Engineering

This paper aims to provide an overview of social engineering attacks, and their impacts on cybersecurity, including national and international security, and figures out detection techniques, and major methods for countermeasure. How do social engineering attacks affect national and international security? And why is it so hard to cope with them? Seeking for answers to these questions, this paper applies qualitative research methods particularly literature review and case analysis. While qualitative research methods are predominantly employed, quantitative methods will also be utilized when deemed essential. Social engineering attacks, also referred to as online fraud, are a type of attack that typically necessitates minimal or no technical knowledge. Social engineering attacks, instead benefit from the weaknesses and mistakes of individuals, since the user is accepted as the weakest link in cybersecurity. Many studies have shown that the vast majority of successful cyber-attacks in the digital world are social engineering (SE) because countering them is more difficult than countering technical cyber-attacks. Based on the analysis of some major cyber-attacks such as the intervention