Which of the following is a social engineering tactic?

• A. SQL Injection.
• B. Buffer overflow attack.
• C. Denial of Service.
• D. Phishing email.

Answer: (D)

Social engineering targets people, exploiting psychology rather than technical flaws. A phishing email is crafted to look like a legitimate message from a trusted entity, prompting the recipient to reveal credentials or click a malicious link. It relies on trust, urgency, or fear to bypass defenses that would stop technical attacks, making the human element the weak link.

The other options are technical exploits: SQL Injection takes advantage of improper input handling to run unauthorized database commands; a buffer overflow corrupts memory by overflowing a memory buffer; a Denial of Service overwhelms a system’s resources to disrupt service. While these are serious, they attack software or infrastructure directly, not the people using it.