Social engineering
You can’t stop people answering phones.
The attacks making headlines right now didn’t start with a zero-day, they started with a phone call. We simulate exactly that, targeting the human entry points your technical controls can’t touch.
THE PROBLEM
Your service desk is an attack surface.
Ransomware groups know that the fastest route into your organization isn’t through your firewall, it’s through your helpdesk. A well-constructed pretext, a name lifted from LinkedIn, and an urgency play is often all it takes. Your verification process was designed to be helpful.
Attackers use that against you.
A Windows server responds the same way to the same exploit every time. People don’t. Someone before their morning coffee is a different target to someone rushing to clear their inbox at end of day. That variability is what makes social engineering both harder to defend and more dangerous than a purely technical attack.
What we test
Vishing
Targeted service desk attacks using realistic pretexts – traveling employees, new starters, urgent account issues.
Strategic and low-volume, simulating exactly how Scattered Spider and similar groups operate.
Verification bypass
Testing whether your authentication and verification processes can be circumvented through research, rapport, and social manipulation – even when those processes look robust on paper.
Pretexting and impersonation
Building and executing believable scenarios grounded in real employee data, gathered through open-source reconnaissance before a single call is made.
Full-spectrum handoff
Social engineering as the entry point for deeper red team engagement. Once initial access is gained, we hand off to the wider CovertSwarm team for lateral movement, privilege escalation, full compromise.
HOW WE APPROACH IT
Strategic. Exactly like the real thing.
We’re not here to run high volumes of calls to generate a pass/fail rate. We’re simulating real threat actors. That means precision over volume. Every call is targeted, every pretext is researched, every move is deliberate.
01 Reconnaissance
Building a target picture from publicly available data. Identifying internal routes, employee profiles, and pretext opportunities.
02 Pretext construction
Building scenarios grounded in what we’ve found: remote employees, office transfers, urgent access requests.
03 Attack execution
Targeted engagement, applying authority, urgency, rapport, and ego manipulation to test whether your people and processes hold.
04 Findings & recommendations
Specific, actionable remediation, not just “train your staff.”
WHAT WE FIND
Knowledge-based verification is the most consistently exploitable weakness we encounter. The personal details your service desk uses to confirm identity are almost always findable through open-source research.
The specific questions your verification process relies on, and exactly where attackers find the answers, is something we walk through during an engagement.
What we can tell you is that if your process relies on information an employee might share publicly, it’s not as secure as you think.
“They had an eleven-question verification protocol. We bypassed every single one with a combination of research, sidestepping, and rapport.”
CovertSwarm social engineering specialist (confidential)
Be polite. But be paranoid.
ONE THING TO REMEMBER
Close-knit teams aren’t safer, they’re often more vulnerable.
Trust becomes an assumption. Challenge becomes confrontation.
We help organizations build a culture where questioning unfamiliar people is expected, not awkward.
Your people are a target. Find out how easy a target.
Talk to our social engineering specialists about testing the human entry points your technical controls can’t reach.