Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Scout Motto… Always be prepared

Apologies its been a few weeks since I posted, what with starting a new day job, and many many things to sort out at home I have struggled to get the time and the mindset to get something written.

So I thought I would do a quick post on how important it is to always be prepared, dib dib, dob dob and all that :) This might sound obvious but a key part of social engineering is research, as obviously as this may be many social engineers spend little time doing thorough information gathering.

This information gathering is vital to increase our chances of success. With this information we can get information about the target organisation, how it interacts with other organisations and the public. We can identify specific key subjects, and then gain information on them and their social connections, preferences, and history.

This then gives us the ability to create informed believable pretexts, and improves our ability to think on our feet, adjust accordingly and make some what informed decisions. Social engineers often overlook these points and I can understand why, the reality is that we are so often unchallenged in our engagements that we don’t have to think on our feet to much, and when it does happen perhaps we can bluff and fluff our way through.

I am sometimes cocky myself and don’t do the right level of prep work, and being sloppy can lead to disaster. As we continue to educate and bring awareness to the masses about social engineering, I really hope that companies and Joe Public will become more aware and more challenging, meaning that social engineers finally have to up their games.

Give this some thought, and don’t forget to do your homework. Next year I aim to put some posts together on Open Source Information Gathering and the information that can be revealed.

NLP for Social Engineers

Anybody in the industry who has talked to me about NLP has understood my utter frustration about the state of NLP learning and its application to social engineering. It got me riled up enough to do a post on NLP and science a few months ago.

And, for the past few months, I’ve been pondering the idea of doing a free education series for the industry on what NLP is and how to use it as a social engineer. But, as anybody who knows me knows, I’ve been a bit busy. Foreground is taking off, having made the INC 5000 due to the phenomenal amount of growth (and corresponding amount of work for each of us). And my own projects (Connected Career, Information Security Leaders, and the projects we do through Michael Murray and Associates) have added an even bigger load.

But I got really riled up when I read the NLP section of the new Social Engineering framework. Because, while true, it doesn’t teach the reader anything useful about how to use NLP in SE. (That shouldn’t be taken as a criticism – I believe strongly in the project and will be helping to edit and correct deficiencies and gaps over the coming months… the guys over there are doing the community a phenomenal service).

So, I sat down and started recording the material I had been putting together over the previous months. It’s going to come out to about 10 hours of audio, video and a whole pile of exercises. I even did a video to explain what you’re going to get.

Check out the video and sign up here.

Technorati Tags: Hypnosis, NLP, social engineering, social-engineer.org