COMMON ATTACK PATTERN ENUMERATION AND CLASSIFICATIONLive MITRE record

CAPEC-418

Influence Perception of Reciprocation

An adversary uses a social engineering techniques to produce a sense of obligation in the target to perform a certain action or concede some sensitive or key piece of information. Obligation has to do with actions one feels they need to take due to some sort of social, legal, or moral requirement, duty, contract, or promise. There are various techniques for fostering a sense of obligation to reciprocate or concede during ordinary modes of communication. One method is to compliment the target, and follow up the compliment with a question. If performed correctly the target may volunteer a key piece of information, sometimes involuntarily.

Abstraction

Detailed

Typical severity

Medium

Likelihood of attack

Medium

Understand the attack

What is this attack pattern?

An adversary uses a social engineering techniques to produce a sense of obligation in the target to perform a certain action or concede some sensitive or key piece of information. Obligation has to do with actions one feels they need to take due to some sort of social, legal, or moral requirement, duty, contract, or promise. There are various techniques for fostering a sense of obligation to reciprocate or concede during ordinary modes of communication. One method is to compliment the target, and follow up the compliment with a question. If performed correctly the target may volunteer a key piece of information, sometimes involuntarily.

Requirements

What does the attack require?

Prerequisites

  • The adversary must have the means and knowledge of how to communicate with the target in some manner.

Skills required

  • Low: The adversary requires strong inter-personal and communication skills.

Resources required

  • None: No specialized resources are required to execute this type of attack.

Impact

What does a successful attack lead to?

Other

Affected scopes: Confidentiality, Integrity, Availability

Defence

How is it prevented and mitigated?

1
An organization should provide regular, robust cybersecurity training to its employees to prevent social engineering attacks.

Real world

MITRE example instances

Example instance 1Detail
An adversary develops a relationship with the target to foster a feeling of obligation in them to perform a certain action or concede some information. A perception of obligation/concession means that the target feels they need to behave in some way or perform some sort of action due to being morally or legally bound to do so.