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)

Setting up the environment

In order to get a target to a vulnerable point of easily being persuaded, it is necessary to create a suitable environment. A suitable environment is one where the target feels obligated to do something for the social engineer. There are four tactics used to create this environment.

Influence tactics

Social engineers dedicate time to practice their persuasion skills until it is almost natural to them. They go to the point of trying to persuade almost everyone on everything just to prove their skills. This is because persuasion plays the ultimate move in a social engineering attack. There are eight techniques used to influence people. The government, scammers, politicians, and media personnel employ...