What is a reverse social engineering attack?

A reverse social engineering attack is a person-to-person attack in which an attacker convinces the target that he or she has a problem or might have a certain problem in the future and that he, the attacker, is ready to help solve the problem. Reverse social engineering is performed through the following steps:

• An attacker first damages the target’s equipment.
• He next advertises himself as a person of authority, ably skilled in solving that problem.
• In this step, he gains the trust of the target and obtains access to sensitive information.

If this reverse social engineering is performed well enough to convince the target, he often calls the attacker and asks for help.

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