Small and medium businesses are facing an unprecedented wave of sophisticated social engineering attacks that manipulate victims into compromising their own security. These so-called “scam-yourself” attacks surged 614% in Q3 2024, and small and medium-sized businesses were targeted significantly more frequently than large enterprises.
Let’s take a closer look at this dangerous threat and explore practical defenses you can implement today. Understanding how these attacks work—and why they’re so effective—is the first step in protecting your organization from becoming their next victim.
What Are Scam-Yourself Attacks?
Cybercriminals are always inventing new tricks, and among the latest ones is the “scam-yourself” attack, which is essentially a social-engineering scheme that convinces users to carry out the attackers’ work. The criminal provides the tools and instructions, while the target unknowingly executes the malicious payload themselves. Common scenarios include:
- ClickFix campaigns present fake error messages requiring user “fixes.” They then guide victims to paste malicious code into command prompts. Interestingly, this form of the scam-yourself attack has been adopted by nation-state actors, including APT28 (Russia), Kimsuky (North Korea), and MuddyWater (Iran).
- Fake IT/helpdesk requests: Attackers may pretend to be internal IT support. For example, an email or chat might claim to be from your company’s IT team, asking you to “test” a password or run a tool. In one known scam, cybercriminals posed as IT and asked employees to verify password strength by entering it into a provided tool – which secretly sent the password to the attacker.
- Malicious captcha attacks are another common variant of the scam-yourself social engineering attack, mimicking legitimate “I’m not a robot” verification prompts to trick users into copying and executing malicious PowerShell scripts.
- Fake software updates exploit our conditioning to keep software current. Pop-ups claiming “Your browser is out of date” or “Critical security update required” guide users through steps that install malware instead of legitimate patches.
In all these cases, the scam-yourself attacks are authentic-looking and blend seamlessly into everyday workflows, so their victims often have no idea they’re enabling the breach. By the time anyone notices, the attacker often has a foothold—ready to move laterally, steal data, or drop ransomware.
Why Do Scam-Yourself Attacks Work?
Scam-yourself attacks work because they exploit the same human nature that makes phishing effective, but they hide behind what looks like routine IT workflows.
Instead of demanding passwords or wiring money, the attacker asks the user to perform a harmless-seeming action—run a command, paste a snippet, or follow a short “fix-it” guide. Victims think they are doing something useful, so they move fast and skip the usual skepticism.
Four psychological triggers do most of the heavy lifting:
- Authority: an alert dressed up as a Windows or Google Chrome messages carries instant credibility.
- Urgency: words like “critical error” or “security update” push people to act before they think.
- Competence bias: tech-savvy staff like solving problems on their own, so a step-by-step tutorial feels empowering.
- Fear of disruption: no one wants to be blamed for downtime, so they follow instructions to keep work flowing.
The technical side of scam-yourself attacks then only reinforces the psychological one. A typical scam starts with a compromised website, a booby-trapped document, or an HTML attachment.
When the target opens the link, an authentic-looking dialog reports a failure to load a page or file and offers a quick solution. One click later, a malicious PowerShell script runs silently, or the user pastes the code themselves, believing they are fixing the issue.
How to Defend Against Scam-Yourself Social Engineering Attacks?
Despite the sophisticated nature of scam-yourself attacks, all organizations can implement effective defenses without enterprise-level budgets.
The most important thing is to understand that employee awareness training provides the highest return on investment. According to the 2019 Webroot Threat Report (PDF), properly trained employees decrease the success rate of social engineering attacks by 70%.
Employee training must focus specifically on social engineering recognition, not just generic cybersecurity awareness. Effective programs use micro-learning modules because short, weekly sessions are more effective than annual training marathons.
Of course, technical safeguards also matter and can go a long way in stopping scam-yourself social engineering attacks dead in their tracks, and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) is the single most effective one as it can dramatically reduce breach risk even when sensitive credentials become compromised.
Equally important is filtering out malicious messages before it ever reaches a user. Microsoft 365 includes Microsoft Defender for Office 365, which scans every message and attachment in real time. Safe Links rewrites and tests URLs in a secure sandbox, while Safe Attachments opens suspicious files in an isolated virtual machine to catch zero-day malware. The platform’s AI-driven anti-phishing policies flag spoofed sender domains and unusual sending patterns to block most scam-yourself lures before they hit the inbox.
A clear reporting and incident-response process is the last line of defense. Give employees an easy, no-blame way to report anything that feels off so that your security team can isolate the device, cut off any attacker access, and start remediation within minutes.
Since attackers don’t keep office hours, protection can’t stop at five o’clock. The problem is that most small teams can’t watch alerts and respond to incident reports around the clock. Partnering with a managed security provider fills that gap, which is why 77% of SMBs expect to outsource half their cybersecurity needs within five years.
A dedicated security operations center keeps an eye on your environment 24/7, spots unusual activity, and takes action before a single workstation threat spreads to the whole network. What’s more, Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) offer access to enterprise-grade tools and 24/7 monitoring capabilities at a fraction of the cost of building internal capabilities.
Conclusion
Scam-yourself attacks succeed because they exploit trust in everyday workflows—making employees unwitting accomplices in their own breaches. But with the right combination of employee training, technical safeguards, and proactive monitoring, your business can significantly reduce the risk, especially if you don’t face it alone.
If you run a small or midsize business, then we at OSIbeyond can provide managed security designed to protect your infrastructure from evolving social engineering attacks like scam-yourself attacks—without enterprise-level complexity or cost. Contact us today to strengthen your defenses before attackers put them to the test.