Social engineering refers to a non-technical breach of security that relies heavily on human interaction, i.e. tricking end users into breaking normal security measures.

Virus writers and spammers alike depend heavily on disguising malware and spam as innocent messages or software, which may even pretend to be fighting against the very form of cyber crime that is about to be committed. The objective is to get the user to respond: click on an infected e-mail attachment, click on a link to a compromised web site, or respond to a fake unsubscribe notice ... the list is endless.

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• About spammer technologies

• Recent trends in malware evolution