How to Use social engineering in a Sentence

social engineering

noun
  • This data can be used for scams or social engineering attacks.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 14 Nov. 2025
  • The attacker needed weeks of social engineering and rare zero-days to get one shot at us.
    — Philip Martin, Fortune, 29 May 2026
  • So far, the most common use of AI for hacking has been social engineering.
    — Los Angeles Times, 5 Mar. 2026
  • These attacks start with social engineering.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 5 Dec. 2025
  • Most ransomware root causes lie in human error, with social engineering and phishing.
    — Christian Espinosa, Forbes.com, 23 Feb. 2026
  • So, social engineering is a favorite tactic.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 13 Aug. 2025
  • The common thread in each case is social engineering, and this calls for layered verification.
    — Brian Greenberg, Forbes.com, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Deepfakes and social engineering are not science fiction.
    — Brian Greenberg, Forbes.com, 25 Aug. 2025
  • Sure, lots of threats are out there, everything from historic DDoS attacks to good old social engineering.
    — PC Magazine, 24 Oct. 2025
  • Why attackers love this tactic This is classic social engineering.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 15 Jan. 2026
  • Credential abuse and social engineering aren't just technical threats.
    — Natasha Bryan, Forbes.com, 26 Aug. 2025
  • There are also more nebulous items, including advice to beware of social engineering.
    — Neil J. Rubenking, PC Magazine, 24 June 2026
  • The group relies heavily on social engineering tactics such as phishing and smishing to gain access to corporate systems.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 29 Dec. 2025
  • Over time, the more fusion between business and government, the less need there is to write new laws and regulations at all to advance economic and social engineering.
    — Clyde Wayne Crews Jr, Forbes.com, 25 Aug. 2025
  • These warning signs show up repeatedly in cases involving teen hackers, social engineering crews and ransomware groups.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 13 Jan. 2026
  • Phone calls, access testing and social engineering scripts typically fall to younger participants.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 13 Jan. 2026
  • Threat actors rarely need sophisticated malware when social engineering, ignorance, speed and misguided trust are enough to commit threat.
    — Morey Haber, Forbes.com, 23 Feb. 2026
  • According to Allianz, the attacker used a social engineering technique to break in, though the company did not disclose further details.
    — Kurt Knutsson, FOXNews.com, 10 Aug. 2025
  • Reconnaissance, exploitation, lateral movement and social engineering now adapt in real time—faster than static detection rules can keep up.
    — Rick Hutchinson, Forbes.com, 12 Feb. 2026
  • Next, the victims were directed to contact Indian call centers, where alleged co-conspirators would use social engineering techniques to build trust.
    — Alex Riggins, Mercury News, 29 Aug. 2025
  • Unlike other crimes that use hacking or social engineering scams to access victims’ funds remotely, wrench attacks rely on more brutish methods of coercion like kidnapping and torture.
    — Megan Cassidy, San Francisco Chronicle, 3 Apr. 2026
  • That’s why recent headline ransomware attacks have used social engineering to steal 2FA codes rather than relying on technical exploits.
    — Zak Doffman, Forbes.com, 31 Aug. 2025
  • LastPass noticed that a malicious actor launched a new social engineering campaign in early March to trick people into sharing key account details.
    — James Peckham, PC Magazine, 6 Mar. 2026
  • This turns social engineering into a continuous optimization process, enabling long-running email fraud operations to evolve in nearly real time.
    — Michael Decesare, Forbes.com, 30 Jan. 2026
  • Beyond ghost tapping, cybersecurity teams are seeing a spike in mobile fraud methods that leverage social engineering and rogue apps to fool users into disclosing credit card and banking data.
    — Paolo Dal Cin, Fortune, 19 Nov. 2025
  • Remember, enable multi-factor authentication wherever possible; even that may not have been enough in this case, since social engineering was the real attack vector here.
    — Alan Henry, PC Magazine, 6 Mar. 2026
  • Improved social engineering techniques, more convincing pages, and increasingly sophisticated lures are making these campaigns harder for our users to detect.
    — PC Magazine, 12 Nov. 2025
  • This backward-looking approach fails entirely against novel attack vectors like synthetic identity creation and deepfake social engineering.
    — Ethan Stone, USA Today, 11 May 2026
  • Lapsus$, by contrast, is an older hacking group, known for social engineering and phishing attacks that focus on stealing user log-in credentials and then using those credentials to gain access to and steal sensitive data.
    — Beatrice Nolan, Fortune, 2 Apr. 2026
  • Doppel Simulations demonstrates the state of social engineering attacks to companies, is used for training, and to test vulnerabilities.
    — Allie Garfinkle, Fortune, 19 Nov. 2025

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'social engineering.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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