Book Image

Learn Social Engineering

Book Image

Learn Social Engineering

Overview of this book

This book will provide you with a holistic understanding of social engineering. It will help you to avoid and combat social engineering attacks by giving you a detailed insight into how a social engineer operates. Learn Social Engineering starts by giving you a grounding in the different types of social engineering attacks,and the damages they cause. It then sets up the lab environment to use different toolS and then perform social engineering steps such as information gathering. The book covers topics from baiting, phishing, and spear phishing, to pretexting and scareware. By the end of the book, you will be in a position to protect yourself and your systems from social engineering threats and attacks. All in all, the book covers social engineering from A to Z , along with excerpts from many world wide known security experts.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Five fundamental aspects of persuasion

Persuasion is a well-crafted process with the aim of getting a target ensnared in a trap where his or her decisions are directly influenced by the attacker. Social engineers stick to the following five aspects of persuasion:

  • Having a clear goal: Persuasion comes from deep within and the social engineer must know at the beginning of an interaction with a target what the end goal is. In the previous chapter, NLP was discussed and the impact of the subconscious mind in the making of decisions was looked at. If the social engineer resolves to achieve something, the subconscious will also have that expectation and will assist in the attainment of that goal. With a clear outline of the goals, it is easier to plan ahead on how the interaction with a target will be controlled. It is also important for the social engineer to have a yardstick to measure...