The adversary leverages a perception of scarcity to persuade the target to perform an action or divulge information that is advantageous to the adversary. By conveying a perception of scarcity, or a situation of limited supply, the adversary aims to create a sense of urgency in the context of a target's decision-making process.
Likelihood Of Attack
High
Typical Severity
Low
Relationships
This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern. These relationships are defined as ChildOf and ParentOf, and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as CanFollow, PeerOf, and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar attack patterns that the user may want to explore.
Nature
Type
ID
Name
ChildOf
Standard Attack Pattern - A standard level attack pattern in CAPEC is focused on a specific methodology or technique used in an attack. It is often seen as a singular piece of a fully executed attack. A standard attack pattern is meant to provide sufficient details to understand the specific technique and how it attempts to accomplish a desired goal. A standard level attack pattern is a specific type of a more abstract meta level attack pattern.
The adversary must have the means and knowledge of how to communicate with the target in some manner.
Skills Required
[Level: Low]
The adversary requires strong inter-personal and communication skills.
Resources Required
None: No specialized resources are required to execute this type of attack.
Consequences
This table specifies different individual consequences associated with the attack pattern. The Scope identifies the security property that is violated, while the Impact describes the negative technical impact that arises if an adversary succeeds in their attack. The Likelihood provides information about how likely the specific consequence is expected to be seen relative to the other consequences in the list. For example, there may be high likelihood that a pattern will be used to achieve a certain impact, but a low likelihood that it will be exploited to achieve a different impact.
Scope
Impact
Likelihood
Confidentiality
Integrity
Availability
Other
Mitigations
An organization should provide regular, robust cybersecurity training to its employees to prevent social engineering attacks.
Example Instances
An adversary sends an email to a target about a limited-time opportunity to claim a considerable monetary reward. The email contains a link to a site which the adversary says is only active for a short time and to the first person to claim it. By convincing the user of the scarcity of the monetary reward, the adversary aims to persuade them to click on the malicious link in the email.
Related Weaknesses
A Related Weakness relationship associates a weakness with this attack pattern. Each association implies a weakness that must exist for a given attack to be successful. If multiple weaknesses are associated with the attack pattern, then any of the weaknesses (but not necessarily all) may be present for the attack to be successful. Each related weakness is identified by a CWE identifier.
Social Engineering: CWE does not currently cover Social Engineering in the way it is presented by CAPEC. Therefore, no mapping between the two corpuses can be made at this time.
References
[REF-348] "The Official Social Engineering Portal". Social-Engineer.org. Tick Tock Computers, LLC. <http://www.social-engineer.org>.
Description
This table shows the other attack patterns and high level categories that are related to this attack pattern. These relationships are defined as ChildOf and ParentOf, and give insight to similar items that may exist at higher and lower levels of abstraction. In addition, relationships such as CanFollow, PeerOf, and CanAlsoBe are defined to show similar attack patterns that the user may want to explore.
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