social engineering

Social engineering methods and means for obtaining information have been around for ages.

They seem like simple requests or benign coordinated events, but the truth is that social engineering often exploits your most valuable asset.  Your users.  A compromised user can then be used to wreak havoc or throw deeper hooks into the targeted network.  Most network hacks are incremental in nature with an attack vector that often times leads to a compromised user, admin, or super user.