Social engineering 2.0: A foundational work

During the past few years, social engineering has rapidly evolved and has become a mainstream technique in cybercrime and terrorism. It is used especially in targeted attacks involving complex human and technological exploits, aimed at deceiving humans and IT systems. Building on the work carried out in the DOGANA project, funded by the European Union, this paper provides an overview of the evolution and of the current landscape of social engineering, and introduces as its main contribution a theoretical model of how human exploits are built, named the Victim Communication Stack.