Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

Emotional Masks

Who’s the best at hiding their emotions?  Well, take a look at the video below, which delineates the most popular society at masking their emotions.  It is not Brits as one might suggest.

Dr.  David Matsumoto, microexpression expert, comments on why this might be so prevalent in Japanese society.

He suggests that because it is such a populated country, people need to cooperate with one another to live amicably.

Instead of seeing anger or sadness, Japanese people neutralize those emotions to live harmoniously.  This can be seen in the Japanese martial arts as well, where control over one’s emotions and actions as well as having an acute observation of their opponent is crucial for victory.

This is tantamount to America’s poker players who try to mask their emotions at all costs and benefit from being able to read their opponents emotions/body language.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Antisocial Disorder

When people think of psychopaths they think one in a million, perhaps that’s just me.

It turns out that the infrequencies of psychopaths in the world is just a myth.  According to, the Sign of the Times: Psychopathy website this disorder is more prevalent than one might have thought or perhaps wants to believe.

The mounting cases in the media of people who have committed horrific crimes points to the leading polls that psychopathy, if you will, is a prevalent threat to the world.

According to this website, psychopaths make up 4% of the world population and who knows what percent of alien populations elsewhere (ha ha?).  They purport that the prevalence rate for anorexia is a 3.43% and it is nearly deemed an epidemic.  It’s interesting because that figure is a fraction lower than the rate for antisocial personality aka psychopaths.

To put this in perspective, high-profile disorders classed as schizophrenia occur in only 1% [of the population].  This is a quarter the rate of antisocial personality disorder.  Also, the CDC rates colon cancer as “alarmingly high” (in the U.S.) with one in 40 people per 100,000 having the disease and this is 100 times lower than the rate of antisocial personality.

It seems obvious that the severity of psychopaths has a huge scale range.  The question is, is even the smallest remnants of antisocial disorder dangerous?

The article alludes to the possible dangers of such behaviors:

Now add to this strange fantasy the ability to conceal from other people that your psychological makeup is radically different from theirs.  Since everyone simply assumes that conscience is universal among human beings, hiding the fact that you are conscience-free is nearly effortless.

What are your thoughts on the issue?  Keep in mind some of the recent news stories such as the Anthony case?

The article goes on to affirm that, most of us would not link ethnic genocide to something as small as guiltlessly lying to one’s boss about a coworker.  It suggests that not only are these relatable but that the link is the absence of the inner mechanism that beats up on us emotionally when we make a choice we view as immoral , unethical or selfish.

In the video below, expert Dr. Jeffrey Hancock from Cornell University discusses the disorder and how to detect deception when dealing with a psychopath.  Courtesy of Fox 25 News Station.

Detecting deception: Psychopaths among us: MyFoxBOSTON.com

Subliminal Hacking at Hash Days 2011 … Swiss Security Conference

Hashdays – the premier technical security conference in the center of Switzerland organized by DEFCON Switzerland.

During 4 days the center of Switzerland will become also the center of IT security knowledge transfer. On October 26th and 27h you will be able to learn a lot in the workshops. The following 2 days (October 28th and 29th) will be full of highly technical IT security talks.

Be sure to reserve your seat early – the space is limited.

I have the pleasure of once again speaking at the awesome Hash Days Security Conference held in Lucerne Switzerland. The conference had its first outing last year and it really was a brilliant event, with great talks, workshops and attendees, it really was a good time, I even went to jail there :)

So this years talk is called “Social Engineering Like In The Movies – The Reality of Awareness and Manipulation”. On the TV and on the Big Screen we see all sorts of strange and amazing things, and when it comes to reading peoples minds, telling if they are telling a lie, or influencing someone to carry out our desires even the far out can seem possible. With the growing exposure of body language, micro expressions, and lingustic techniques sometimes we forget about actual reality. In this talk I will talk about what you can really gain when you understand body language tells, can the eyes really reveal hidden messages, and can we really get people to hand over their possesions with the right language and framing.

Social Engineering Like In The Movies – The reality of awareness and manipulation
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