Social engineering

Social engineering exploits trust, urgency, fear or greed. The attacker impersonates a colleague, a support agent, a recruiter or an investor and builds a story that leads the target to hand over a password, install malicious software, approve a transaction or reveal personal data. Phishing, pretexting phone calls and fake job offers are all forms of it.

In crypto it often opens the door to technical attacks. The 2022 Ronin bridge theft, worth more than 600 million dollars, began when an engineer received a fake job offer containing a malicious file. Groups linked to North Korea use fake recruiters and fake developer tests extensively, and in 2025 Coinbase disclosed that bribed support staff had leaked customer data later used to impersonate the exchange.

Because it targets human behaviour, no single tool stops it. Verifying requests through a separate channel, limiting who can approve large transfers and training staff to treat unexpected urgency as a warning sign are the core defences.