social engineering

1. Social Engineering

What is social engineering you might ask? It doesn’t just pertain to technology and using it for computer hacking tricks. Social engineering is a technique in using technology, psychology, and manipulation to squeeze information out of someone.

A prime example of a former criminal who used social engineering was Kevin Mitnick. He is now a consultant in cyber security getting paid big bucks by the FBI. The point of me referring to him is that he used phishing techniques by calling corporations and people up over the phone to get information out of them. He pretended to be someone he’s not.

Through the use of a social engineering strategy, Kevin Mitnick was able to steal passwords, social security numbers, and credit card information over the phone. From there he used this information to break into victims private computers, and other types of safeguards that protect personal data.

There is a pretty cool online tool that can generate all types of fake information. The information generated will give you a completely new identity including a fake address, social security number, and a fictitious credit card number. If you want to create a new identity for social engineering, just click on the anchor text I just linked to. Again, I want to stress that this tool is for educational purposes only