---
type: "term"
title: "Social Engineering (#9)"
description: "A threat cluster where an attacker psychologically manipulates individuals into performing actions counter to their or their organization's best interests, such as divulging confidential information, granting access, executing code, or bypassing security procedures."
resource: "tlctc:term:social-engineering-9"
tags:
  - "glossary"
---
# Social Engineering (#9)

A threat cluster where an attacker psychologically manipulates individuals into performing actions counter to their or their organization's best interests, such as divulging confidential information, granting access, executing code, or bypassing security procedures. The generic vulnerability is human psychological factors: gullibility, trust, ignorance, fear, urgency, authority bias, curiosity, or general compromisability. Often serves as the initial vector enabling other threat clusters (e.g., #9→#4 for credential harvesting, #9→#7 for malware installation, #9→#1 for feature misconfiguration).

**Related reading:** [CVE-2026-21510: Windows Shell SmartScreen bypass](https://www.tlctc.net/cve-2026-21510.html), [Topology of cyber attacks — Bridge vs Internal](https://www.tlctc.net/tlctc-topology-of-cyber-attacks.html), [tlctc-social-engineering-bifurcation.html](https://www.tlctc.net/tlctc-social-engineering-bifurcation.html), [TLCTC+ for NCSCs & CERTs — national reporting](https://www.tlctc.net/tlctc-plus-ncsc-proposal.html)
