5 Key Social Engineering Trends in 2026
5 Key Social Engineering Trends in 2026
Hackers know it’s easier to trick people than to break into systems.
While some spend their time crafting zero-days or evading EDR with custom scripts, many attackers skip the hard part entirely. Instead, they go after human behavior, where defenses are weakest, and trust is easiest to exploit.
In 2026, social engineering will remain one of the most consistent and effective entry points into enterprise environments. What’s changing is how sophisticated – and coordinated – these attacks have become.
As attackers get smarter and blend psychological manipulation with technology in new and unsettling ways, it’s critical to understand the latest trends in social engineering, including tactics that bypass awareness training, MFA, and other key defenses. The threat is not going away.
Below are five social engineering trends security teams should be watching closely in 2026, and why traditional defenses continue to struggle against them.
1. Surging ClickFix Campaigns
ClickFix attacks surged up to 517% in 2025. These campaigns rely on users copying and pasting malicious commands into their own terminals after being tricked by seemingly legit messages in their browsers. These attacks don’t exploit software flaws — they exploit trust.
A typical ClickFix attack looks like this:
A user searches for something common (e.g., “Zoom installer” or “Outlook login”).
A malicious ad or search result leads to a cloned site that resembles the real service.
The site displays a warning like “Suspicious activity detected: click here to secure your account.” Or it may have a fake CAPTCHA message asking for seemingly routine verification.
The user is instructed to copy and paste a command into their terminal.
That command often runs a malicious PowerShell script, installing malware such as a remote access trojan.
The only exploit in these campaigns is misplaced trust. ClickFix campaigns reflect a growing pivot away from relying on just phishing emails toward search engine abuse, real-time social engineering, and the abuse of native system tools like PowerShell. In 2026, expect threat actors to use more tricks to make their ClickFix attacks even more convincing.
Why It Matters:
ClickFix attacks bypass technical controls by turning users into the execution engine, making prevention-only defenses ineffective.
2. Multi-Channel Attacks
Another trend to watch out for is the increasing orchestration of coordinated, multi‑stage campaigns that traverse channels. Attacks can involve email, SMS, voice, collaboration platforms, and even helpdesk systems to weave a context that feels real to the target. As we move into 2026, expect this multi-channel deception to evolve into even more synchronized threat sequences.
Multi‑channel social engineering works because it leverages context and continuity:
Stage One: Initial Contact Across a Reliable Channel
The attacker starts on a channel with high trust and low filtering, such as SMS or Slack/Teams. That first message might not even have a link. It often includes context, such as a project name, vendor reference, or a meeting mention that the target expects to see.Stage Two: Follow‑Up Reinforcement
Within minutes, a second message arrives on a separate channel, such as an email or a voice call, that references the first contact. The attacker cites the same project, the same request, and the same urgency. This cross‑channel reinforcement breaks down skepticism.Stage Three: Credential Harvesting or Action Prompt
The final stage is a bridge to action, whether that’s a sign‑in URL, a “PDF invoice” behind a collaboration workspace, or a request to verify identity on a known platform. Because the victim has already “approved” the context through multiple touchpoints, they’re much more likely to comply.
Traditional defenses like email gateways, web filters, and endpoint detection are built for channel‑specific threat models. If the target ignores one channel, the attacker pivots to another. This is why detection should focus on the ability to spot sequences of interactions rather than solely isolated events. Similarly, social engineering incident response playbooks should account for multi-channel deception.
Why It Matters:
When social engineering spans multiple channels, isolated security controls fail. Detection and response must focus on interaction patterns, not single events.
3. Deepfake Challenges Deepen
Deepfakes are no longer fringe tools. They’re now a scalable part of social engineering campaigns.
The continued improvement in gen AI tools has turned what used to be high-effort social engineering into scalable deception-on-demand, making deepfakes a growing part of corporate impersonation playbooks. They help threat actors easily fake voices, mimic faces, and replicate behavioral patterns with alarming accuracy.
In 2026, defenders are likely to see deepfake-enabled impersonation woven across entire attack chains, rather than confined to a single email, call, or video. That will make them harder to isolate.
Everyone can see the proliferation of deepfakes with a cursory search on YouTube. The democratization of tools like ElevenLabs makes it easy to create convincing deepfakes using source material from targets' LinkedIn profiles. The number of deepfake files circulating online increased from 500k in 2023 to over 8 million in 2025.
Some evolutions include:
Voice cloning in calls
Attackers are now placing phone calls using real-time voice synthesis tools that replicate an executive’s tone, cadence, and vocal signature. Combine that with leaked meeting schedules or publicly posted travel dates, and it’s easy to craft plausible pretexts.Video deepfakes for social trust
Short-form deepfake videos (15–30 seconds) are being embedded in WhatsApp messages or internal comms apps like Slack. They appear to be urgent updates from a CEO or department head, encouraging employees to sign a document, join a call, or follow a link.Personalized scripts powered by AI
With access to scraped public data (blog posts, interviews, earnings calls), attackers fine-tune AI prompts to mimic how specific execs write or speak, right down to their catchphrases or cultural references. The result is phishing emails and voice notes feel right.
Why It Matters:
Deepfakes are evolving from one-off tricks into scalable impersonation tools that amplify trust across email, voice, and video.
4. Targeting IT Support Processes
One of the most dangerous evolutions in social engineering is the targeting of internal IT and support workflows.
There’s been a spike in what some defenders are calling “false team play,” a form of social engineering built on the illusion of internal collaboration. In these schemes, an attacker impersonates a helpdesk, support team member, or IT manager within enterprise collaboration tools (e.g., Microsoft Teams) to gain trust and prompt action. In real cases, threat groups have sent vishing or collaboration platform messages that appear to come from internal support, then used that trust to request password resets, service ticket escalations, or access provisioning.
A special social engineering edition of Palo Alto Unit 42’s Incident Response report found that high-touch attacks exploiting IT support processes are on the rise. The report cites one example of a threat actor escalating from impersonation to domain admin access in under 40 minutes – using only social pretexts and no malware.
Classic security controls aren’t designed to catch a Teams message from someone who looks like an employee or a phone call that uses legitimate support language. Looking ahead to 2026, this style of attack might intensify as companies automate more of their support workflows.
Why It Matters:
By abusing internal trust and support workflows, attackers can reach high-impact access levels without deploying malware or triggering traditional alerts.
5. Brand Impersonation Success
Brand impersonation is one of the most effective social engineering vectors at turning familiarity into a vulnerability. Threat actors replicate trusted digital artifacts, tailor lures to specific user communities, and then weave them into multi‑stage delivery chains that appear legitimate until the last step. This is only going to become more of a problem as people expect to interact with their preferred brands online.
One of the most telling examples comes from Palo Alto Networks’ Unit 42 research: two closely linked campaigns in 2025 actively impersonated widely used applications and software to distribute Gh0st RAT malware to Chinese‑speaking users. Rather than generic phishing spam, these operations crafted thousands of domains mimicking real brands, from popular browser installers to well‑known productivity tools, and embedded malicious payloads in installers that appeared genuine.
Users have been basically primed to trust known brands. When a prompt presents itself as “Your download is ready,” “Update available for [widely used app],” or a support notification from a known platform, people proceed out of habit or convenience long before they analyze the context or URL.
Complicating matters are IDN (Internationalized Domain Name) homographs. These are domain names that visually mimic legitimate brands by replacing Latin characters with similar-looking Unicode characters. To the naked eye, especially in small browser address bars or mobile screens, they’re very hard to spot. Even worse, these domains often carry valid TLS certificates and clean WHOIS records, giving them an extra layer of credibility. Security tools may not flag them if they're newly registered and not yet reported as malicious.
Why It Matters:
Familiar brands lower user skepticism, and visual deception like IDN homographs makes malicious infrastructure harder to distinguish from legitimate services.
Closing the Awareness-Action Gap
Social engineering attacks are becoming more layered, more believable, and more operationally precise. They don’t rely on a single mistake, but on a series of human approvals.
As attacker playbooks evolve, defenders need more than awareness training. They need opportunities to experience these tactics under pressure, recognize patterns across channels, and practice decision-making before real consequences are on the line.
That’s why simulation is a frontline tactic in the fight to defend against social engineering. As attackers evolve their TTPs, your defenders need opportunities to experience them firsthand.
Cloud Range provides exactly that with live-fire, cyber range simulations for SOC and incident response teams of all experience levels. Ensure your team is battle-ready. Request your Cloud Range demo here.
Why It Matters:
As social engineering becomes more coordinated and realistic, preparedness depends less on awareness and more on practiced response under real-world conditions.
