It's really hard not to fall for a social engineer's trickery; it can be embarrassing, as long as it happens to someone else. Movies are great resources to help you understand social engineering better. The following are my top three Hollywood movies, which can help you to picture and learn how social engineering works:

Conmen Roy and Frank start their scam by calling victims and trying to sell their customers water filtration systems for hundreds of dollars, which were available for just $50 in actual stores. The two conmen use many classic social engineering moves, such as passing the phone from Frank to Roy who poses as Frank's boss, giving the operation more credibility and playing with victims minds to make everything more realistic and gain their victim's trust. There are many more social engineering techniques used during the story. It is a good way to visualize some of the techniques that you will read about in this book.

This is based on the life story of Frank Abagnale, who is one of the most infamous social engineers. He started his journey while he was a teenager. Abagnale ran away from home and managed to pose as a Pan Am pilot and scam thousands of miles of free flights around the world, making people believe that he was a real pilot.

This was not all. Abagnale also pretended to be a doctor and a teacher before he was caught by the FBI (years later). The movie is a good example of how social engineering is the art of human hacking, and how vulnerable we humans are.

Danny Ocean (George Clooney) and his 11 accomplices planned to rob three Las Vegas casinos simultaneously. Mr. Ocean and his accomplices used social engineering, technical smarts, and strategically placed insiders to penetrate the Bellagio's comprehensive, state-of-the-art security system and abscond with $160 million.

In this, even the best defenses could not immunize the organization against penetration by concerted adversaries.