Social Enginering - Hacking the mind

The basic goals of social engineering are the same as hacking in general: to gain unauthorized access to systems or information in order to commit fraud, network intrusion, industrial espionage, identity theft, or simply to disrupt the system or network. "Social engineering uses influence and persuasion to deceive people by convincing them that the social engineer is someone he isn't, or by manipulation. As a result, the social engineer is able to take advantage of people to obtain information with or without the use of technology." While the ILOVEYOU attack was a virus attack, it also used social engineering -- exploiting the weakness that curious people that would click on an e-mail attachment.