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)

Avoiding elicitation

There are many things that come into play when a social engineer tries to perform elicitation. There are some excellent tactics that can be employed to ensure that an elicitation attempt is successful. They range from buying the target some alcohol to flattering their egos.

Some of these tactics will be covered now:

Appealing to egos

Many people, especially those in senior positions, like to have their egos stroked. It is done to appeal to the target but it should be done carefully since it is also possible that a target will shut you off if it is overdone. A good way to do this is just to acknowledge the basic things and be subtle about it. For example, after a presentation, you may proceed to one of...