Knowbe4 iconKnowbe4Sep 16, 2026

Alert: AI is Accelerating Targeted Social Engineering Attacks

AI tools are drastically improving the speed of the reconnaissance stage of targeted social engineering attacks, according to researchers at ESET. Attackers can use these tools to trawl the internet for publicly available information about potential victims, and incorporate this information into personalized spear phishing attacks.

Alert: AI is Accelerating Targeted Social Engineering Attacks

Share this story

Send the public story page.

Useful takeaways from this story.

AI tools are drastically improving the speed of the reconnaissance stage of targeted social engineering attacks, according to researchers at ESET.

Attackers can use these tools to trawl the internet for publicly available information about potential victims, and incorporate this information into personalized spear phishing attacks.

Building the complete brief

The page is ready to read now. The fuller skim-friendly version will appear here automatically.

The useful part

AI tools are drastically improving the speed of the reconnaissance stage of targeted social engineering attacks, according to researchers at ESET. Attackers can use these tools to trawl the internet for publicly available information about potential victims, and incorporate this information into personalized spear phishing attacks.

Keep reading in the app

Open the app view to save this story, compare related coverage, and continue from the same source.

Open in app