ABSTRACT
This chapter examines many of the challenges that defenders face when trying to prevent damage from social engineering attacks whether they originate in St. Petersburg or Washington, DC. The social engineering attacks designed toward radicalization of individuals politically, socially, is more complex than the persuasion attack and it is also more effective on people who have a predisposition toward hatred, racism, anarchy, violence, and anti-social behavior in general. If the United States, and, in fact, the world, is really going to make a more successful effort to fight back against social engineering attacks, there will need to be considerably more effort put forth in the education endeavor. The most complex model of social engineering on the Internet has been the radicalization of individual citizens against their people or their government and their recruitment to violent extremism. Violent extremist supremacist groups and violent sovereign citizens are leveraging online tools and resources to propagate socially engineered messages of violence and division.
