Social Engineering Cyberattack Model

The problem of cybersecurity against SE methods remains relevant annually. Applying organizational and software security methods to protect user does not achieve the desired result, since this is the last defensive line. Furthermore, present articles do not pay enough attention to the protection of the communication channel, which made the attack possible, to countering the attacker and the prerequisites for the first stage of the attack. To implement this concept, a detailed description of a social engineering attack and the characteristics of the attacker is necessary, which will allow the application of countermeasures to provide cybersecurity. This work provides an analysis of existing approaches to describing social engineering methods. Advantages and disadvantages of descriptions in each article have been presented. The main section of this article provides a description of social engineering methods using the mathematical elements of set theory. Set-theoretic models describe the properties of entities of social engineering attacks. The article also provides a description of the interaction between models, methods of counteracting attack actions at each stage. An example of a description of the attack process using set theory is given.